3DATS Tech Talk

Latest configuration updates

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:37:00 +0000

Short version:

Click here for the up-to-date configurations!

Long version:

Well, as some of you have noticed, this site has not had an update in recent months. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the readers, and to let you know that I've moved to another system for keeping the configurations up to date. I've moved to Amazon.com because they've upped their game on computer parts lately, the configurations came out costing less than on Newegg and a lot of the parts I wanted to use that were out of stock on Newegg were in stock on Amazon. It's also easier for me to use their list system and their affiliates system. Those who know Amazon will know that Amazon sells from their own inventory and also has listings for 3rd party sellers. I've tried to only select parts that are available from Amazon inventory, and recommend using the Buy buttons that indicate Sold By Amazon.com unless one of the thrid party sellers has a better deal and looks reliable. Caveat emptor.

Those of you who know me in real life know that I've gone back to school, and I do this writing and recommendations on the side. I don't get paid for it or get any money from ads, so if you find these recommendations helpful, you can reciprocate by helping me get what every student wants: credits on Amazon.com. It's easy and it doesn't cost you anything. Just use the link below if you buy any of these parts, or bookmark this: http://www.amazon.com/?tag=andylynnnet-20 and use it to access Amazon. If you don't like Amazon, find a better price or want to use a different vendor for any reason, just use the link below for reference.

Click here for the up-to-date configurations!

I won't be publishing monthly. Instead I'll be updating the lists on Amazon as the market changes or new products come out.

April Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 02:26:00 +0000

Sandy Bridge is back! (Finally.)

Intel has fixed the problem with the SATA controller for Socket 1155 motherboards, and a healthy selection of boards are back on the market. The old ones were recalled, so just make sure to buy from a reliable source. For example, any of the boards on this list on Newegg.com will come with the fixed chips.

Vendors are still having some trouble with keeping these motherboards in stock, so if you want to build one of the configurations below and the motherboard is out of stock, just grab a substitute from the list. Match the chipset (P67 or H61), the form factor (ATX or Micro ATX) and the number of DIMM slots.

These new CPUs are excellent values in the lower to mid range of computers we write about on this site. What they're not good for is the very low end - they start at $125, so they're not going to show up in a $300 PC - and the high end. Later this year, lower end chips will be released carrying the Pentium label, and high end chips will come later with up to 8 cores, quad channel RAM support and more PCIE lanes for better multi-GPU support. The high end will require new motherboards, so if you buy now a later upgrade will be a bit complicated, but the future high end hardware will also be expensive so if you're looking for anything up to a Midrange configuration, now is a great time to buy.

If for any reason you don't want to go with the new Intel line - for example, the multi-GPU motherboard selection is slim - the 6-core AMD 1100T is down to $230, and at that price I like it a lot. This configuration is a solid 1100T option.

More on Hardware

What I wrote in February about GPUs still holds. I'm not recommending Quadros in any of these systems because the value isn't there, but if you happen to need a 6GB workstation card you want this Quadro 6000. For CUDA work, I actually recommend the 3GB Geforce 580. 3GB is pretty good, the GPU is faster for CUDA than the Quadro's and the price is much more attractive. Either way, you're going to want a high end power supply because these GPUs burn a lot of electrons.

SSD prices are down, and I've included them in several of these configurations. If you install your OS and commonly used programs on it and keep only your active projects on it, the space should be plenty and load times will drop precipitously. If you want to upgrade an existing PC consider this package which includes hardware and software to make moving hard drives simpler. It's an affordable and easy way to get into SSD.

To get the most out of an SSD, with its high speed and relatively small capacity, install the OS and software on the SSD and keep your active project files there, and use a conventional hard drive for the rest of your storage.

Now, on to:

The Workstations

If you're not familiar with this section, please read the explanation of methodology. If you want to better understand what goes into the parts lists, see the explanation of workstation parts.

Non-3D Workstations

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Last time I ran the numbers on Sandy Bridge hardware, there wasn't an option inexpensive enough to use in the Intern. Now that the i3-2100 is available, I'm using it, and by going with its onboard GPU (better than the last generation of onboard GPU, but not good enough for anything beyond the Intern) and taking advantage of its power savings this build is $50 less than the previous Intern. The Micro ATX case minimizes space needs so you can pack more interns in the back room next to the copiers than ever before.

Why go with a configuration like this instead of a $400 generic PC, when it's just for the interns and the non-techies? Reliability. This is the least expensive we can make a configuration like this, without resorting to obsolete or shoddy parts. What's lacking? Expandability. These H61 motherboards give you only what you need to build a simple system, they don't take well to video card upgrades and have fewer DIMM slots than the higher end parts.

The Photoshopper
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Core i7 2600K has been consistently racking up the highest scores ever seen in Photoshop benchmarks, which makes quite a bit of sense, considering the benefits of the new architecture and this CPU's 3.8GHz Turbo Boost capability. With a good motherboard, a solid but extremely efficient video card and an SSD boot disk plus a RAID for working files, in a quiet Antec Sonata case, you've got the best box you can get for Creative Suite applications for under $1300. Not bad, huh?

The RE4 drives bring improved reliability to compensate for the added risks of RAID 0, but I would be remiss not to say that you really do need an external backup system. In an office environment, this can be as simple as a nightly backup of project files to the server.

Whatever else you do, an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 is indispensable, and a Wacom Intuos4 Tablet is a very good idea. Consider an IPS display from the Displays section below.

3D Workstations

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The i5-2500K and Radeon 6850 represent the latest, most efficient technology. They match up well and keep this workstation under $1200, making it an easy way to meet the needs of modeling and rendering stills. This is also an ideal configuration for CAD users and with its quiet case and low power consumption, is an excellent choice for an architecture firm's standard desktop PC and a much better choice than the usual single-Xeon-with-low-end-Quadro that Dell et al sell by the thousand to firms that don't read this site.

The Midrange (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange builds on the Budget's strengths with a faster CPU, larger SSD, higher end motherboard, better case and a middle of the line FirePro v5800 workstation video card. Depending on your needs, you could easily replace this with a high end consumer card such as a Geforce 570 or ATI's latest Radeon 6970 and expect excellent performance. Serious Cinema4D users, SolidWorks users and Maya users should opt for the FirePro, but it's not so important in Max, AutoCAD and Revit, and if this is for at home use and you also want to game on it (it's okay, we understand) the good consumer cards will give you a performance boost.

Take advantage of the motherboard's excellent SATA3 capabilities to run the SSD and Caviar Black drives at peak speeds. If you're an overclocker, you should also be pleased with this board, but do make sure to research safe overclocking before trying it, since that's beyond the scope of this site.

The High-End (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

There's been less movement at the high end of the market, with the replacement for the Socket 1366 chips still several months off. The six core i7-970 is still very close to the top of the single-CPU heap and the best value going at under $600. The Asus Sabertooth motherboard is still pulling in excellent reviews and is built to last.

The FirePro V7800 is the best thing in this price class for powering your viewports. We're still waiting for nVidia to come out with a Quadro based on a newer core than the inefficient GF100, and until they do I remain reluctant to recommend a Quadro, though if you do have that as a requirement for some reason your best bet in this price class is the Quadro 4000.

Install your OS and software on the SSD and use the 1TB drive for your working files. For a bit more speed, order two of the 1TB drives and put them in a RAID 0. (Remember, RE drives are "RAID Edition" for a reason.) Or, if you want to get extreme, you can even buy two of the SSD's and RAID those. There are two SATA3 ports to run the SSD's at peak speed, and the RE4 hard drives are happy on the SATA2 ports.

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Attention 3DSMax users! There's a software bug that you should know about. It seems that when running Max 2011 and Windows 7 on a 12-core system with Hyperthreading turned on an an nVidia video card, there is a bug... somewhere, in... some software product. It's really quite unclear exactly what is going on, since none of the companies involved will fess up to having caused the problem, but it makes Max run very slow. This is all I can tell you. There are conflicting reports on whether ATI cards are also affected. But basically, if you have one of these dual-six workstations and Max is running no faster than it would on your grandmother's Pentium II, try turning off hyperthreading in the BIOS settings.

Now, I'm happy to report that there is finally a faster option that the dual X5680. 4% faster, to be exact. Now don't all go running off to buy these at the same time. But anyway, you still won't find a more powerful workstation without overclocking. Not that you can't overclock this one - but considering what you're spending on it, please do be careful.

As for video cards, I'm still sticking with the FirePro v8800 because nothing else has come along to make me change my mind. It's a better value than the Quadro 5000, but a FirePro v7800 2GB, Quadro 4000 2GB or Quadro 5000 2.5GB would be valid choices, depending on needs. But please, don't buy one of those Quadros for CUDA. If you want CUDA get the FirePro v7800 2GB and a 3GB Geforce 580.

Oh, one more thing. These Xeons use triple-channel memory and each CPU has its own memory controller. When using two of these CPUs, there are six memory channels, so the RAM used must be matched DIMMs in multiples of six. This configuration uses six DIMMs. Space them out in alternating DIMM slots and if you add more later, buy the same type.

3D Workstations for CUDA Users

You guys know how I feel about CUDA renderers, and how they're a great way for nVidia to sell more of their most expensive hardware and not a cost effective way to get any work done. But you're not going to listen to me, because nVidia mesmerized you with their demonstration of how iray is so much faster than the slowest possible mental ray settings and looks just like Maxwell did 5 years ago, so if you must buy CUDA hardware, here are a couple of options.

The Midrange (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

There are now Socket 1155 boards using extra nVidia NF200 PCIE controllers to add multi GPU capabilities. These controllers aren't as fast as the ones built into the motherboard chipset, since they add a couple of layers between the GPU and the CPU, bu they're certainly fast enough for adding CUDA power. So this system uses one of those, a few video cards and an i7-2600K to bring you the best of both worlds: a lot of CPU and a lot of GPU, in as reasonable a package as we can manage.

Here's what you do. Plug the Radeon card into the slot labeled PCIEX16_1 (the one that will be on top when the computer is assembled and the tower is upright). The nVidia cards go in PCIEX16_2 and PCIEX8_2. Why the ATI card, which doesn't even support CUDA? Precisely because it doesn't support CUDA. Plug the monitor into it, and your software isn't going to get confused into loading a CUDA job onto a GPU that's also got a display taking up its onboard memory.

In many respects this machine is similar to the regular Midrange. In fact, if you're not using Vray RT-GPU, iray or another CUDA rendering package, this build is worse than the one above because the FirePro video card is better for driving viewports in 3D apps. But with this version, what you get is:

-A motherboard that supports up to three video cards
-Dual Geforce GTX 560 cards with 2GB RAM onboard. (These are better for CUDA than the Quadro 4000 cards that people who aren't smart enough to read this site buy.)
-More power!

The 2GB GTX 560 is a great option for running software like this, because at only $280 each they replace Quadro 4000 cards costing $780 each, saving you $1000 on a dual GPU system at no cost in performance. You can thank me later.

If you want even more power, two 3GB Geforce 580 cards can be used with this configuration; however, a 1000 watt power supply would be highly recommended. Three 3GB Geforce 580 cards, which would be an upgrade to the configuration Chaosgroup used in their demo? The cost/benefit is against you, but you can do it; a 1200 watt power supply is needed.

The High-End (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Back in December I wrote up a high end CUDA workstation with two Quadro 6000's and a FirePro v7800, and it cost $11,000. For some reason, none of you guys bought it. Maybe it was because of my rant on how CUDA hardware was far too expensive and then told you all not to buy it. Fortunately that 3GB Geforce 580 is out now and offers a more reasonable alternative, so at about $5,300 this system is actually a good buy for those who rely on CUDA. I'm leaving in the FirePro, because you'll get more CUDA performance if you have the monitor hooked up to a separate, non-CUDA card.

Now, why do I keep writing 3GB Geforce 580 like that with the Amazon link? Because Newegg doesn't have it listed yet. So the configuration in the Newegg link is incomplete; you must also add two of the 3GB Geforce 580 from Amazon.

Render Power

The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This system you the render power of the Maxer, without the amenities such as SSD and high end video that are important in a workstation. Put this under your desk, put it on the same high speed network as your workstation (or make a dedicated subnet just for these) and you can use Backburner or distributed buckets to add its rendering power to your workstation.

Render Farms

I don't think a lot of you guys are making your own rackmount render farms, so I'm leaving it out this month and seeing whether anybody objects, as a way of gauging interest. Also, as 've said before, these things are a bit more involved than workstations, so one of your first steps should be to consult with a company that sells dedicated render farm equipment - Boxx is a good choice. They have custom setups that fit more power into less space, and software that helps you manage the farm better.

Displays

A while back, one of my friends sent me a link to this article debunking pretty much every metric and slogan used in HDTV marketing. The market for LCD monitors is no less confusing, so concentrate on three things:

-Screen size.

-Resolution. This is not the problem it is in laptops, but what would you rather have - a 22" screen that's 1680x1050, or a 21.5" screen that's 1920x1080?

-IPS/PVA or TN. What you want here is an IPS or PVA panel, not a TN panel. Inexpensive monitors are TN panels, which have much worse color gamuts and viewing angles than better screens. A consumer LCD monitor likely isn't even processing and displaying color in 8 bits per channel, and if you move your desk chair 6 inches to the side the levels change.

So, here are a few options, all good quality IPS displays usable for professional graphics work:

-Eizo 24" CG243W. Let's get this out of the way first. This is a very expensive monitor with freakin' fantastic color quality. This monitor is appropriate for use in high end video, photography and publishing production environments. It is not necessary for most visualization are graphics work, but if you want the best that's available to you without costing more than your car, this is it. Pairs well with The Maxer.

-HP 22" ZR22W. This takes the spot that the Dell 2209WA used to occupy in my recommendations: a budget friendly model that beats a TN display and pairs well with the Intern and Budget systems. However, the newer HP model is a better panel, has a higher resolution and costs less. It's a winner at the lower end.

-HP 24" ZR24W and HP 30" ZR30W. As the names suggest, these are larger models from the same line as the ZR22W. All are great value options and significant steps up from consumer grade displays. You can size you ZR to your budget.

-27" gets you a whole lot of pixels at a more reasonable price point than a 30". The Dell U2711 is a solid option. Another one to consider is the Apple 27" Cinema Display. This gives excellent color, but since it was originally intended to be plugged into a Apple laptop you can really only use it if your video card has a DisplayPort plug, and you add this adapter. (All of the video cards in this month's systems have at last one DisplayPort, but only the Radeon 6870 in the Budget already has Mini DisplayPort and does not require any adapter.)

-NEC 30" 3090WQXi. NEC's answer to the 30" Apple monitor. H-IPS panel for high end color and good viewing angles. A step up from the 30" HP, and a step up in price.

As usual, whatever you choose, calibrate it! We're not talking about one of those software functions where you look at the gray square and try to make it the same value as the lines, we're talking about a dedicated hardware calibration device. I use the Eye-One Display 2, but some users prefer the Color Munki, which can also be used with printers and projectors. I can't stress the importance of this enough - without calibration, you'll never be able to match your prints to your screen, whether you're using your system for 3D rendering, graphic design or photography.

These new Macs are legit

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 22:00:00 +0000

I was at the mall yesterday, so of course I went in the Apple Store and ran Cinebench on the new Macbook Pros. Here are some results.

First, the 15". The has a new quad core 17 and renders about as fast as an AMD 1055T 6-core, and does the OpenGL test about as fast as a Radeon 4870. This CPU is about twice as fast as last year's model. The new 17" model has the same hardware.

The 13" is also twice as fast as the previous model. What's not impressive is the OpenGL score - this isn't really going to cut it for 3D app use, though it's fantastic for, say, a photographer. Still, remember that this is using only the new Intel integrated graphics, so at least it's low power.

These CPUs are tough to find in Windows laptops, but should be showing up sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, it's a great time to buy a Macbook Pro - I like the Apple web site for ordering these, since you can customize, but if you want one of the off-the-shelf models you might save some tax money by buying this or this or this.

February Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 20:41:00 +0000

Now, I know this is going to come back to bite me like signing Adrian Beltre to a long-term contract, but I'm not waiting any more for the fixed Socket 1155 motherboards. These configs are due for an update, so they're getting one, with the parts currently available, and they'll get updated again once the new boards become available.

If you are in the market for a Photo, Budget or Midrange system, understand that the fixed motherboards for the new Sandy Bridge CPUs are in the pipeline right now, so if you wait you'll be able to get better value. I can't tell you exactly how long you'll be waiting, all I know is that Intel said they were starting to ship new parts on the 14th, and I can guess it takes two to four weeks to get them installed on boards and get the boards tested and distributed. The rest of the configs will not be affected.

(If you have no idea what this is about, you can read about it here.)

More New Hardware!

It should come as no surprise to regular readers that I'm not a fan of expensive video cards and the CUDA renderers that help sell them, since I still haven't seen them do anything more useful in arch vis production than what we can already do on the more sophisticated CPU renderers. Nevertheless, there are a few people out there who have successfully integrated GPU rendering into their work. For any of you who have been considering unreasonably overpriced Quadro or Tesla hardware for this purpose, instead take a close look at this 3GB Geforce 580 card. It's hard to find in stock, but its GPU runs CUDA faster than any Quadro or Tesla card on the market. If you want CUDA power, just put in a backorder now and get it as soon as it's available, because nothing better is coming in the near future.

The Quadro 6000 and Tesla C2070 will still be necessary for those needing 6GB onboard, but there is now no reason for a CUDA user to buy a Quadro 4000 or 5000 or a Tesla C2050, which are all based on technology that has been made obsolete by the Geforce 500 series. (I'm recommending the Quadro 6000 over the Tesla because they're the same price now and the Quadro has more features, and the rest of those cards I just listed are such bad values in the current market I'm not even linking them.)

nVidia has been at work filling out its Geforce 500 line with GPUs that (finally) compete with ATI on power consumption, but ATI hasn't been resting either. In the Radeon 6900 series they've introduced direct competitors to the Geforce 560 and 570. The fastest thing out there in consumer cards in still the Radeon 5970 4GB, but with a $900 price tag it's only slightly more practical than a high end Quadro.

The 64 Crucial C300 series SSD is down to $125. I'm rating this "strong buy". The capacity isn't huge by today's standards, but if you install your OS and commonly used programs on it and keep only your active projects on it, the space should be plenty and load times will drop precipitously. This and other SSD options are included in many of the workstations below, but if you want to upgrade an existing PC consider this package, which is a bit more expensive but includes hardware and software to make moving hard drives simpler.

Now that we've had a sampling of Sandy Bridge CPUs, prices on other models are falling. The AMD 1090T, which used to be a great value at $300, is now $200, and the 1100T is down to $240.

Now, on to:

The Workstations

If you're not familiar with this section, please read the explanation of methodology. If you want to better understand what goes into the parts lists, see the explanation of workstation parts.

Non-3D Workstations

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

With a three-core AMD CPU, 4GB of RAM, an improved Radeon card with DirectX 11, and 64-bit Windows 7, this build will fit the needs of both your intern, your bookkeeper and your senior partner who doesn't use CAD. You can build something cheaper, but I don't recommend it.

This month's system is upgraded again, but it's still $600. Price drops on computer parts are right up there with death and taxes.

The Photoshopper
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This is a quiet, power efficient box that meets the needs of photographers, graphic designers and marketing staff. At under $300, the quad-core i7-870 is still the best option for these tasks. The 800-series has a fantastic turbo boost in one- and two-threaded operation, which will help in Creative Suite and other apps that do not fully utilize all of the cores.

Install Windows and your most commonly used software on the SSD, along with your projects that are in daily use. The two RE4 (Raid Edition) hard drives have improved life expectancy over normal hard drives, necessary for reliable use in a RAID 0, which is the goal here. Put the rest of your files on the RAID to improve read/write speed on those large PSD files. Even with the RE4 drives, I would be remiss not to say that you really do need an external backup system. In an office environment, this can be as simple as a nightly backup of project files to the server.

Whatever else you do, an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 is indispensable, and a Wacom Intuos4 Tablet is a very good idea. Consider an IPS display from the Displays section below.

3D Workstations

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This box is a very capable renderer, and is all the power you need for working on Revit models, Max (or Cinema4D, Rhino, etc.) stills and Photoshop work. The price is up this month, for three reasons: the motherboard from last month is out of stock and the replacement is a bit more expensive, the video card is upgraded and I've added an SSD drive.

At $125, it doesn't make sense to me to leave out the SSD, though if you save the money and skip it you'll be sacrificing load speed but not render speed. The Radeon 6870 is a great value, especially if you mail in the rebate.

The Midrange (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange had a minor refresh this week, and another one this week. Looking at it side by side with this month's Budget build, the two systems are more similar than ever. Price drops have been bringing up the specs of an $1100-1200 system to the point where it's difficult to distinguish from a $1600-1700 system. Where the Midrange stands out is in the better case and the FirePro video card. More on that later.

The Midrange features AMD's best consumer line six-core CPU, the 1100T. (If you're an overclocker, this CPU has its multiplier unlocked, and you'll want fast RAM to take advantage of it. But you already knew that.) The motherboard is a solid Asus choice, using AMD's best chipset, that can take two video cards at full speed as well as the latest peripherals (USB 3.0 and SATA3 6.0GB/s). The 128GB SSD and WD Caviar Black can take advantage of that SATA3 adapter.

Since the regular edition of the Midrange doesn't need CUDA, the video card is a no brainer. For this money, for a video card to drive your 3D viewports and AutoCAD or Revit without doubling as a space heater for your office, the v5800 is the best thing. By not caring about CUDA, you get a lot of advantages in the viewport department. Serious Cinema4D users should also opt for this configuration, as the only way to make Cinebench run significantly faster is to step up to the much more expensive FirePro v8800.

If this is for a home office and you want to game on it in the off hours, for the same money I'd go with a Geforce 570 or Radeon 6970.

The High-End (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Well, Intel has finally got around to replacing the 980X as the top of the line desktop CPU. With the 990X, which is an extra $50 for an extra 0.13GHz. These guys are nuts. Fortunately, the price has finally fallen on the i7-970, probably because of pressure from AMD and from Intel's own 980X, so I'm taking the rare step of lowering the spec on a workstation. Even at this level I can't say that the difference between 3.2GHz and 3.33GHz is worth $400. What would make it worth that? If you're an overclocker. The 980X and 990X have unlocked multipliers and the 970 does not, so if you want to go extreme on it the 990X is going to be worth the cost.

Since this site does not actually recommend extreme overclocking, the 970 is the clear value winner.

The FirePro V7800 is the best thing in this price class for powering your viewports. We're still waiting for nVidia to come out with a Quadro based on a newer core than the inefficient GF100, and until they do I remain reluctant to recommend a Quadro.

Install your OS and software on the SSD and use the 1TB drive for your working files. For a bit more speed, order two of the 1TB drives and put them in a RAID 0. (Remember, RE drives are "RAID Edition" for a reason.) Or, as one CGArchitect reader suggested, you can even RAID two of the SSD's. By saving $400 off last month's CPU price, some budget has been freed up here - some of which is going into a pretty sick high efficiency power supply, but if you're targeting $3000 you've got a bit of room to work.

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Maxer holds the line on Maxness. You won't find a more powerful workstation without overclocking. Not that you can't overclock this one - but considering what you're spending on it, please do be careful.

As for video cards, this was a tough one. I'm sticking with the FirePro v8800 mainly because I don't see a compelling reason to switch and it's a better value than the Quadro 5000, but a FirePro v7800 2GB, Quadro 4000 2GB or Quadro 5000 2.5GB would be valid choices, depending on needs. But please, don't buy one of those Quadros for CUDA. If you want CUDA get the FirePro v7800 2GB and a 3GB Geforce 580.

Oh, one more thing. These Xeons use triple-channel memory and each CPU has its own memory controller. When using two of these CPUs, there are six memory channels, so the RAM used must be matched DIMMs in multiples of six. This configuration uses six DIMMs. Space them out in alternating DIMM slots and if you add more later, buy the same type.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

3D Workstations for CUDA Users

You guys know how I feel about CUDA renderers, and how they're a great way for nVidia to sell more of their most expensive hardware and not a cost effective way to get any work done. But you're not going to listen to me, because nVidia mesmerized you with their demonstration of how iray is so much faster than the slowest possible mental ray settings and looks just like Maxwell did 5 years ago, so if you must buy CUDA hardware, here are a couple of options.

The Midrange (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

In many respects this machine is similar to the regular Midrange. In fact, if you're not using Vray RT-GPU, iray or another CUDA rendering package, this build is worse than the one above because the FirePro video card is better for driving viewports in 3D apps. But with this version, what you get is:

-A motherboard that supports up to three video cards
-Dual Geforce GTX 560 cards with 2GB RAM onboard. (These are better for CUDA than the Quadro 4000 cards that people who aren't smart enough to read this site buy.)
-More power!

The 2GB GTX 560 is a great option for running software like this. It's the most memory you can put on a card that's not a Quadro, at only $260 each. A single Quadro 4000 card would cost $780 and while it would likely outperform this configuration in viewport performance, it would not run a CUDA renderer nearly as well.

If you want even more power, two 3GB Geforce 580 cards can be used with this configuration; however, a 1000 watt power supply would be highly recommended. Three 3GB Geforce 580 cards, which would be an upgrade to the configuration Chaosgroup used in their demo? The cost/benefit is against you, but you can do it; a 1200 watt power supply is needed.

The High-End (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Back in December I wrote up a high end CUDA workstation with two Quadro 6000's and a FirePro v7800, and it cost $11,000. For some reason, none of you guys bought it. Maybe it was because of my rant on how CUDA hardware was far too expensive and then told you all not to buy it. Fortunately that 3GB Geforce 580 is out now and offers a more reasonable alternative, so at about $5,300 this system is actually a good buy for those who rely on CUDA. I'm leaving in the FirePro, because you'll get more CUDA performance if you have the monitor hooked up to a separate, non-CUDA card.

Now, why do I keep writing 3GB Geforce 580 like that with the Amazon link? Because Newegg doesn't have it listed yet. So the configuration in the Newegg link is incomplete; you must also add two of the 3GB Geforce 580 from Amazon.

Render Power

The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

12-core Opteron hardware is actually advancing, but marginally, and 6-core Xeons are still the way to cram render power into a box. This system you the render power of the Maxer, without the amenities such as SSD and high end video that are important in a workstation. Put this under your desk, put it on the same high speed network as your workstation (or make a dedicated subnet just for these) and you can use Backburner or distributed buckets to add its rendering power to your workstation

The Render Farm
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

I've had questions on how to use previous render node configs as the basis for a rackmount render farm, so I'm providing that configuration here. With a 25U rack you have space for six 4U nodes and a KVM switch that fits in the last 1U of rack space. This parts list is everything you need for a six-node farm, except for an old monitor pulled out of your supply closet.

But don't buy this without first exploring your options with a company like Boxx. They have custom setups that fit more power into less space, and software that helps you manage the farm better.

Displays

A while back, one of my friends sent me a link to this article debunking pretty much every metric and slogan used in HDTV marketing. The market for LCD monitors is no less confusing, so concentrate on three things:

-Screen size.

-Resolution. This is not the problem it is in laptops, but what would you rather have - a 22" screen that's 1680x1050, or a 21.5" screen that's 1920x1080?

-IPS/PVA or TN. What you want here is an IPS or PVA panel, not a TN panel. Inexpensive monitors are TN panels, which have much worse color gamuts and viewing angles than better screens. A consumer LCD monitor likely isn't even processing and displaying color in 8 bits per channel, and if you move your desk chair 6 inches to the side the levels change.

So, here are a few options, all good quality IPS displays usable for professional graphics work:

-Eizo 24" CG243W. Let's get this out of the way first. This is a very expensive monitor with freakin' fantastic color quality. This monitor is appropriate for use in high end video, photography and publishing production environments. It is not necessary for most visualization are graphics work, but if you want the best that's available to you without costing more than your car, this is it. Pairs well with The Maxer.

-HP 22" ZR22W. This takes the spot that the Dell 2209WA used to occupy in my recommendations: a budget friendly model that beats a TN display and pairs well with the Intern and Budget systems. However, the newer HP model is a better panel, has a higher resolution and costs less. It's a winner at the lower end.

-HP 24" ZR24W and HP 30" ZR30W. As the names suggest, these are larger models from the same line as the ZR22W. All are great value options and significant steps up from consumer grade displays. You can size you ZR to your budget.

-27" gets you a whole lot of pixels at a more reasonable price point than a 30". The Dell U2711 is a solid option. Another one to consider is the Apple 27" Cinema Display. This gives excellent color, but since it was originally intended to be plugged into a Apple laptop you can really only use it if your video card has a DisplayPort plug, and you add this adapter. (All of the video cards in this month's systems have at last one DisplayPort, but only the Radeon 6870 in the Budget already has Mini DisplayPort and does not require any adapter.)

-NEC 30" 3090WQXi. NEC's answer to the 30" Apple monitor. H-IPS panel for high end color and good viewing angles. A step up from the 30" HP, and a step up in price.

As usual, whatever you choose, calibrate it! We're not talking about one of those software functions where you look at the gray square and try to make it the same value as the lines, we're talking about a dedicated hardware calibration device. I use the Eye-One Display 2, but some users prefer the Color Munki, which can also be used with printers and projectors. I can't stress the importance of this enough - without calibration, you'll never be able to match your prints to your screen, whether you're using your system for 3D rendering, graphic design or photography.

Sandy Bridge Motherboard BUG!

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:53:00 +0000

Well, it looks like Intel has found a bug in the SATA controller used on P67 motherboards for Sandy Bridge CPUs shipped since January 9th. You can read more details on it here. The boards have been pulled from the shelves, and a recall is planned. For now...

What should you do about this?

-I've pulled down the January page on Sandy Bridge workstation configs. You can't buy them now anyway, since the motherboards are not available from Newegg. Replacement motherboards should hit stores soon, and when that happens I will re-introduce Sandy Bridge systems as part of the (hopefully) February workstations list. Affected workstations are the Photoshopper, Budget and Midrange, January editions.

-Don't buy a Sandy Bridge system until the new motherboards hit stores. How will you know when that happens? Newegg.com will show Socket 1155 motherboards in stock. Check for the part numbers on Newegg after they re-emerge, and look for those part numbers. If you buy from a vendor, like Dell, check with them before buying to make sure they can provide an unaffected motherboard.

-If you want to buy a workstation right now, you can buy any of the December configurations with confidence. (Even the December, pre-Sandy Bridge versions of the Photoshopper, Budget and Midrange, which are as powerful now as they were a month ago!)

-If you currently have a Sandy Bridge system based on an H67 motherboard (your motherboard supports the CPU's onboard video) you probably don't have a problem. Don't worry about it, unless Intel or your motherboard maker tells you otherwise.

-If you currently have a Sandy Bridge system based on a P67 motherboard (your motherboard does not support the CPU's onboard video) and you bought it after January 9th you might or might not have a problem. BUT your computer is probably not going to break - at least not any time soon. The bug is in actual materials of a motherboard component that degrade over time - meaning that it will take a while to break. Do the following:

1. Keep important files backed up. (You should do this anyway.)
2. Don't panic. Your computer almost certainly still works.
3. Keep an eye on the support sites for your motherboard manufacturer or PC vendor. Watch for your motherboard or PC to be recalled. This should happen in the next few months.

If you bought an INTEL MOTHERBOARD like the one in the January Budget system, read this: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-032263.htm

If you bought an ASUS MOTHERBOARD, check back with them in a few days. They are preparing a response. But I imagine they have their hands a bit full just now.

Intel's new Sandy Bridge CPUs

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 02:18:00 +0000

Intel just announced their new CPUs and several enthusiast web sites have published pre-release reviews. I'm not sure when these are going to be available from vendors, but it looks like soon, and there will be an update to some of the workstation configurations.

A few quick notes:

All these CPUs will require a new motherboard. They use a new socket type, 1155, that is Sandy Bridge's answer to the 1156 socket used by i3, i5 and some i7 desktop CPUs. This isn't Intel trying to sell you more stuff - there were a number of chipset updates required, so the P55 and H55 motherboards wouldn't have worked anyway.

This round of CPUs will fit into the midrange and high-midrange market segments. The high-end is still held by Intel's two 6-core i7 chips for the 1366 platform. These won't be supplanted until Intel releases a new high-end motherboard and 8-core CPUs, several months from now.

The Midrange and Photoshopper builds, and probably the Budget, are going to need to be replaced. The i7-2600K beats the AMD 1100T in multithreaded rendering (but is about 30%, plus or minus, slower than the i7-980X in the December High End config) and runs Photoshop CS5 faster than... well, anything. It does all this while using less power.

The Core i5-2500K is also a heck of a bargain at around $200, with performance around what a current model $300 i7 will give you and a lot of overclocking potential (see below).

The CUDA boxes will not need to be updated. There are currently two chipsets supporting Sandy Bridge CPUs, the H67 and the P67. The H67 supports onboard video and allows one PCIE x16 card. The P67 does not support onboard video and allows one x16 or two x8 cards. This is not sufficient for multiple video cards running CUDA. (But I don't recommend CUDA for most users anyway.)

Intel's built up hopes for integrated GPUs. Enthusiasts were skeptical. Enthusiasts were right. To make benchmark comparisons a real competition, web sites had to dig up video cards like the Radeon 5450, which is so slow it didn't make the cut for the Intern box.

Oh, and by the way, overclockers. They've gone and changed everything for you. See, with the last few generations, most CPUs have locked multipliers but unlocked BCLK. With the new generation, BCLK is almost completely immobile - if the CPU wants 100MHz, you can get 103 if you're lucky. Overclocking requires multiplier adjustment.

Sandy Bridge CPUs without Turbo Boost have a fully locked multiplier, so what the box says is what you get. CPUs with Turbo have a semi-unlocked multiplier: you can increase it by up to the number of its best Turbo mode.

K series Sandy Bridge CPUs have fully unlocked multipliers, and testers have reported results that are just a bit nuts, like getting a 3.4GHz chip to 4.4GHz with the Intel stock cooler. (Please don't try this at home.)

December 2010 Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 23:40:00 +0000

Apologies to all for the late update this month. The last couple of weeks have been too crazy, and I've been waiting for the GPU market to settle in after the last round of new products. Which brings us to:

New GPUs

ATI and nVidia both introduced some new GPUs in the last month. nVidia's latest are the GF110-based Geforce GTX 580 and 570. A bit of explanation here. Back in the spring, I was at the show where they launched the GTX 480 and 470. These were the first of the promised "Fermi" line, using the GF100 GPU, and they were fast - no faster than the competition, but faster than nVidia's previous line and with some interesting features like improved in-game physics and Direct3D in stereo. But the GF100 chips were obviously a rush job. They leaked power and overheated, nVidia was never able to make a production version of the chip with all 512 cores turned on and a lot of customers avoided them. I recommended them in system only very reluctantly.

nVidia improved the situation with the GF104, which corrected many of the GF100's flaws and hit the midrange. The GF110 brings those fixes to the high-end and should replace the GF100. Due to architectural and power handling fixed, and improved production, the 570 is as fast as the 480 and uses 50W less power under load, and the 580 is faster than the 480 and uses roughly the same amount of power.

So these are good, but I still can't recommend them unconditionally because the Radeon 5870 can be found for $250 now, which is $100 less than the 570, and it's not as fast as these new cards but it uses 50W less power.

Meanwhile ATI is introducing Radeon 6000 series GPUs, and they're making some confusing tweaks to the naming system. I don't want to explain the whole thing here, but basically, a Radeon 6870 is not the card you want if you want a newer and better replacement for a 5870, it's like that across the line, and this has everybody annoyed and confused (and it's bad marketing by ATI). So don't try to align the new parts to the old ones, just compare them to other cards that cost the same and they'll come out looking pretty good.

These developments also leave us wondering about the Tesla and Quadro lines. Those still use GF100 chips, so for those using CUDA it's impossible to get the best of both worlds: you can spend crazy money on a Quadro or Tesla with 6GB onboard, but you're stuck with a GF100 chip. Or you can spend reasonable money on a GF110 card, but you're stuck with 1.5GB. nVidia doesn't want anybody to make a 6GB Geforce, because that would undercut the Quadro / Tesla market and show just how absurd it is that in a Quadro 6000 we're basically spending $500 on a GPU and $3500 on 6GB of RAM. My hope is that two sets of rumors materialize: that 4GB versions of new high-end Radeon cards arrive in the next few months, and that Chaosgroup gets Vray RT for GPU running on ATI hardware, because that would free up the GPU rendering market from nVidia's dominance, and would be nothing but good for the customers.

New CPUs

AMD has refreshed its 2, 3 and 6 core CPUs. The new 6-core Phenom II 1100T is a modest improvement over the 1090T at a modest price, and makes an appearance in this month's workstation list.

Intel is prepping to launch the new "Sandy Bridge" line next month. They will probably start with midrange parts in the $300 and under range for the upcoming 1155 motherboards (the replacement for 1156), and will follow later in the year with 6 and 8 core high end chips for a new motherboard socket to be introduced at that time. More on that when they become available.

As you can see, December is the winter of the hardware market, stuck between November and January product launches, waiting for distributors and retailers to clear out inventory in the run up to Christmas. But that won't keep us from finding value in the current market, which brings us to:

The Workstations

If you're not familiar with this section, please read the explanation of methodology. If you want to better understand what goes into the parts lists, see the explanation of workstation parts.

Non-3D Workstations

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

With a three-core AMD CPU, 4GB of RAM, a Radeon card with DirectX 11 and 1GB, and 64-bit Windows 7, this build will fit the needs of both your intern, your bookkeeper and your senior partner who doesn't use CAD. You can build something cheaper, but I don't recommend it.

This month's system takes advantage of some price drops to get a bit quicker at negligible cost; it's still $600.

The Photoshopper
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This is a quiet, power efficient box that meets the needs of photographers, graphic designers and marketing staff. This month, with prices going the way they are, it makes the most sense to include a quad-core i7-870. The 800-series has a fantastic turbo boost in one- and two-threaded operation, which will help in Creative Suite and other apps that do not fully utilize all of the cores.

SSD drives are also coming down in price, and this month most of the workstations, including this one, use them. Install Windows and your most commonly used software on it, along with your projects that are in daily use. The two RE4 (Raid Edition) hard drives have improved life expectancy over normal hard drives, necessary for reliable use in a RAID 0, which is the goal here. Put the rest of your files on the RAID to improve read/write speed on those large PSD files. Even with the RE4 drives, I would be remiss not to say that you really do need an external backup system. In an office environment, this can be as simple as a nightly backup of project files to the server.

Whatever else you do, an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 is indispensable, and a Wacom Intuos4 Tablet is a very good idea. Consider an IPS display from the Displays section below.

3D Workstations

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

With the price on the six-core AMD 1090T staying so low, the CPU for the Budget system was a no-brainer. Don't be fooled by the $1,000 price tag - this box is a very capable renderer, and is all the power you need for working on Revit models, Max (or Cinema4D, Rhino, etc.) stills and Photoshop work.

Choice of video card was also surprisingly easy, for once. The Radeon 6850, at under $200, is powerful, a fantastic value and also the most energy efficient hardware you're likely to find.

Since this is the budget model, I'm keeping the price low, but if you want an additional speed boost and you can afford it, include this SSD, the same one used in the Photoshopper. It's not really necessary - it just improves boot and program loading times - but it sure makes a computer feel faster.

The Midrange (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange has some nice upgrades this month. It now features AMD's best consumer line six-core CPU, the 1100T. (If you're an overclocker, this CPU has its multiplier unlocked, but you'll want faster RAM to take advantage of it.) The motherboard is a solid Asus choice, using AMD's best chipset, that can take two video cards at full speed as well as the latest peripherals (USB 3.0 and SATA3 6.0GB/s).

That's not all. To take advantage of that SATA3 adapter, the Midrange now includes a 120GB Intel SSD and a new version of the WD Caviar Black that sports SATA3 and a 64MB buffer.

Since the regular edition of the Midrange doesn't need CUDA, the video card is a no brainer. For this money, for a video card to drive your 3D viewports and AutoCAD or Revit without doubling as a space heater for your office, the v5800 is the best thing. By not caring about CUDA, you get a lot of advantages in the viewport department. Serious Cinema4D users should also opt for this configuration, as the only way to make Cinebench run significantly faster is to step up to the much more expensive FirePro v8800.

The High-End (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The FirePro V7800 is back in stock, and it's the best thing in this price class for powering your viewports. This month the High End gets that, a faster SSD and a better hard drive, and several more weeks of wait time as we see what Intel's got for us in January and whether ATI or nVidia will be the first to update their workstation video cards with their new GPUs. (You reading this, ATI and nVidia? Take the midrange challenge: the first to FireGL/Quadro a Radeon 6850/Geforce 570 and sell it for under $800 gets the "strong buy" recommendation!)

CPUs are still quite constrained at this level. There's no real alternative to a 6-core i7, and there are only two of those. I'm sticking with the i7-980X for its speed advantage over the 970, which makes it a slightly better value in terms of rendering speed per overall system price, and the overclocking advantage of its unlocked multiplier, for those who are into that kind of thing. Why Intel has left AMD uncontested in the lower price 6-core market while not updating the 980X in 9 months - which is a long time for CPUs - is beyond my powers of perception, but hopefully they'll have something new that won't require us to wait another 6-9 months for the next generation of motherboards. Still waiting and seeing, but don't let that get in your way - if you need a workstation like this now, buy it now, because any huge improvements are probably a ways off.

Install your OS and software on the SSD and use the 1TB drive for your working files. For a bit more speed, order two of the 1TB drives and put them in a RAID 0. (Remember, RE drives are "RAID Edition" for a reason.)

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Maxer also gets an update this month, with a new motherboard that opens some paths to potential upgrades (to multiple GPUs if you decide you want CUDA/OpenCL, and to 48GB of RAM, since we're now using 4GB DIMMs and keeping half the slots free. I'm also bringing a bit of sanity to the hard drives, ditching RAID in favor of a bigger, faster SSD than ever (the 256GB Crucial C300) and that newer model Caviar Black. Why no RAID? RAID-0 is more complicated, more likely to fail, harder to recover from errors, and harder to retrieve your data if the motherboard fails. RAID-1 is security, but you should be using an external backup.

As for video cards, this was a tough one. I'm sticking with the FirePro v8800 mainly because I don't see a compelling reason to switch and it's a better value than the Quadro 5000, but a FirePro v7800 2GB, Quadro 4000 2GB or Quadro 5000 2.5GB would be valid choices, depending on needs.

Oh, one more thing. These Xeons use triple-channel memory and each CPU has its own memory controller. When using two of these CPUs, there are six memory channels, so the RAM used must be matched DIMMs in multiples of six. This configuration uses six DIMMs. Space them out in alternating DIMM slots and if you add more later, buy the same type.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

3D Workstations for CUDA Users

You guys know how I feel about CUDA renderers, and how they're a great way for nVidia to sell more of their most expensive hardware and not a cost effective way to get any work done. But you're not going to listen to me, because nVidia mesmerized you with their demonstration of how iray is so much faster than the slowest possible mental ray settings and looks just like Maxwell did 5 years ago, so if you must buy CUDA hardware, here are a couple of options.

The Midrange (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

In many respects this machine is similar to the regular Midrange. In fact, if you're not using Vray RT-GPU, iray or another CUDA rendering package, this build is worse than the one above because the FirePro video card is better for driving viewports in 3D apps. But with this version, what you get is:

-A motherboard that supports up to three video cards
-Dual Geforce GTX 460 cards with 2GB RAM onboard
-More power!

The 2GB GTX 460 is a great option for running software like this. It's the most memory you can put on a card that's not a Quadro, at only $260 each. A single Quadro 4000 card would cost $780 and while it would likely outperform this configuration in viewport performance, it would not run a CUDA renderer nearly as well.

If you want even more power, two GTX 570 or GTX 580 cards can be used with this configuration; however, a 1000 watt power supply would be highly recommended. Three GTX 580 cards, which would be an upgrade to the configuration Chaosgroup used in their demo? The cost/benefit is against you, but you can do it; a 1200 watt power supply is needed. The drawback is neither the 570 nor the 580 are available with 2GB, which is going to cripple their performance.

The High-End (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Similar to Midrange version for CUDA rendering, this config is worse than the regular High-End if you don't use a CUDA rendering solution.

The first thing you'll notice about this system is that it's expensive. But after reports on how much video card memory people's renders are taking, I couldn't call this "high end" without including cards with an unusually high amount of memory, and the next step down is 2.5GB. Let's review: the same GPU used in a Geforce card with 1.5GB is under $500, so the other $3500 is buying you the other 4.5GB of memory. That's the most expensive memory you can put in a Windows box. But you've got no other choice.

There are two of them because with only one, this wouldn't be high end. This makes the system as expensive as a Midrange and two Render Nodes, which is what I would buy if I were you.

Render Power

The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

12-core Opteron hardware is getting harder to find and is not dropping in price, so this month's Render Node moves to a more powerful, more expensive dual six-core Xeon. This gives you the render power of the Maxer, without the amenities such as SSD and high end video that are important in a workstation. Put this under your desk, put it on the same high speed network as your workstation (or make a dedicated subnet just for these) and you can use Backburner or distributed buckets to add its rendering power to your workstation

The Render Farm
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

I've had questions on how to use previous render node configs as the basis for a rackmount render farm, so I'm providing that configuration here. With a 25U rack you have space for six 4U nodes and a KVM switch that fits in the last 1U of rack space. This parts list is everything you need for a six-node farm, except for an old monitor pulled out of your supply closet.

But don't buy this without first exploring your options with a company like Boxx. They have custom setups that fit more power into less space, and software that helps you manage the farm better.

Displays

A while back, one of my friends sent me a link to this article debunking pretty much every metric and slogan used in HDTV marketing. The market for LCD monitors is no less confusing, so concentrate on three things:

-Screen size.

-Resolution. This is not the problem it is in laptops, but what would you rather have - a 22" screen that's 1680x1050, or a 21.5" screen that's 1920x1080?

-IPS/PVA or TN. What you want here is an IPS or PVA panel, not a TN panel. Inexpensive monitors are TN panels, which have much worse color gamuts and viewing angles than better screens. A consumer LCD monitor likely isn't even processing and displaying color in 8 bits per channel, and if you move your desk chair 6 inches to the side the levels change.

So, here are a few options, all good quality IPS displays usable for professional graphics work:

-Eizo 24" CG243W. Let's get this out of the way first. This is a very expensive monitor with freakin' fantastic color quality. This monitor is appropriate for use in high end video, photography and publishing production environments. It is not necessary for most visualization are graphics work, but if you want the best that's available to you without costing more than your car, this is it. Pairs well with The Maxer.

-HP 22" ZR22W. This takes the spot that the Dell 2209WA used to occupy in my recommendations: a budget friendly model that beats a TN display and pairs well with the Intern and Budget systems. However, the newer HP model is a better panel, has a higher resolution and costs less. It's a winner at the lower end.

-HP 24" ZR24W and HP 30" ZR30W. As the names suggest, these are larger models from the same line as the ZR22W. All are great value options and significant steps up from consumer grade displays. You can size you ZR to your budget.

-In 27", I've previously recommended the Dell 27" U2711, but that's become hard to find. An excellent alternative is the NEC PA271w. With improved color reproduction and a resolution usually found in 30" displays, this Dell is a step up from the entry level IPS displays but more reasonable than the Eizo. Best with the High End or the Maxer.

-NEC 30" 3090WQXi. NEC's answer to the 30" Apple monitor. H-IPS panel for high end color and good viewing angles. A step up from the 30" HP, and a step up in price.

As usual, whatever you choose, calibrate it! We're not talking about one of those software functions where you look at the gray square and try to make it the same value as the lines, we're talking about a dedicated hardware calibration device. I use the Eye-One Display 2, but some users prefer the Color Munki, which can also be used with printers and projectors. I can't stress the importance of this enough - without calibration, you'll never be able to match your prints to your screen, whether you're using your system for 3D rendering, graphic design or photography.

November Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Lots that's new this month. Since the last workstations update, I've written about laptops, updated the explanation of workstation methodology and discussed my issues with GPU rendering technology.

If you're not familiar with my workstation recommendations, please read my updated explanation of methodology and explanation of computer parts. Even if you buy from a vendor like Dell, HP or Boxx, knowing about these issues will help you make an informed decision.

ATI's New GPUs

In the last couple of weeks, ATI began the Radeon 6000 series rollout with the Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon HD 6870. These cards are fantastic, but a bit misunderstood. The problem is, ATI's making some minor modifications to its naming scheme, so while you'd expect the 6850 to replace the 5850 and the 6870 to replace the 5870, the new cards are actually slower than the old ones with the similar names. The 6850 is actually an alternative to the 5830, and the 6870 should be considered a replacement for the 5850. What the new cards give you over their older (actual) counterparts is lower price, lower power consumption and heat production due to a simplified architecture, and a more efficient altialiaser. If you want a reasonable consumer level card for a budget system or for gaming, these cards rate a very strong buy.

The side effect of all this is that many other models have come down in price, notably the Geforce GTX 460 and GTX 470.

The Workstations

I'm going to try to write a bit less this time, since a lot of the usual spiel is in the update explanation of methodology.

Non-3D Workstations

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

With a three-core AMD CPU, 4GB of RAM, a Radeon card with DirectX 11 and 1GB, and 64-bit Windows 7, this build will fit the needs of both your intern, your bookkeeper and your senior partner who doesn't use CAD. You can build something cheaper, but I don't recommend it.

The Photoshopper
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This is a quiet, power efficient box that meets the needs of photographers, graphic designers and marketing staff.

The two RE3 (Raid Edition) hard drives have improved life expectancy over normal hard drives, necessary for reliable use in a RAID 0, which is the goal here. Use RAID to improve read/write speed on those large PSD files. Even with the RE3 drive, I would be remiss not to say that you really do need an external backup system. In an office environment, this can be as simple as a nightly backup of project files to the server.

Note the use of an i5 instead of an i7. Why? The i5-680 is a dual core with most of the same architecture as the i7, and a base clock of 3.6GHz that goes over 3.8GHz with Turbo Boost! How else are you going to get that without overclocking? (If you do overclock, by all means go to the i7-875k, upgrade the memory to DDR3-2000 and go nuts.) Don't worry, there's no shame in the i5 - I own two myself - and two cores is all you need for this sort of work. Creative Suite apps don't make efficient use of many cores or of Hyperthreading.

Whatever else you do, an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 is indispensable, and a Wacom Intuos4 Tablet is a very good idea. Consider an IPS display from the Displays section below.

3D Workstations

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

An interesting thing happened this month. The price on the AMD 1090T CPU went through the floor. I can't explain why this happened, but as of this writing Newegg is selling for less than the 1075T, which is slower. In these situations, I ask myself, what would Jeremy Clarkson do? At $230 you can't not use this CPU in this class of machine. So, for the time being anyway, the Budget gets the same CPU as the Midrange.

Choice of video card is more difficult. The Radeon 5750, Radeon 5770 and Geforce 450 are all viable options, and pretty close in price. I've gone with the Radeon 5770 this month because it's a bit quicker than than the others, though the Geforce is a bit cheaper and uses a bit less power, so you could really go either way and not be making a bad decision.

The Midrange (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange features AMD's higher end 3.2GHz six-core CPU. (If you're an overclocker, this CPU has its multiplier unlocked, but you'll want faster RAM to take advantage of it.) The motherboard is a solid Asus choice, using AMD's best chipset, that can take two video cards at full speed as well as the latest peripherals (USB 3.0 and SATA3 6.0GB/s).

Since the regular edition of the Midrange doesn't need CUDA, the video card is a no brainer. For this money, for a video card to drive your 3D viewports and AutoCAD or Revit without doubling as a space heater for your office, the v5800 is the best thing. By not caring about CUDA, you get a lot of advantages in the viewport department. Serious Cinema4D users should also opt for this configuration, as the only way to make Cinebench run significantly faster is to step up to the much more expensive FirePro v8800.

There's a new hard drive in here, a Seagate "hybrid" drive which adds 4GB of flash memory storage to a normal 500GB hard drive. This will give you an improvement in booting and accessing your most used software. I didn't want to blow the budget here, but for speed, one thing you can do is substitute the hard drives used in the Photoshop workstation and make them a RAID 0, or replace the Seagate drive with one of the SSDs used in the Maxer or High End systems. The WD Green drive adds substantial storage with modest power, noise and heat numbers, and hard drives with conservative specs are generally more reliable than ones that run faster and hotter.

The High-End (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Normally I recommend the FirePro v7800 in this class. Unfortunately that's out of stock for a while at Newegg, so this month I've included the Quadro 4000, which is more expensive and faster at some tasks - but you wouldn't be making a mistake if you got a v7800 from another source.

CPUs are a bit more constrained at this level. There's no real alternative to a 6-core i7, and there are only two of those. I'm sticking with the i7-980X for its speed advantage over the 970, which makes it a slightly better value in terms of rendering speed per overall system price, and the overclocking advantage of its unlocked multiplier, for those who are into that kind of thing.

Install your OS and software on the SSD and use the 1TB drive for your working files. For a bit more speed, order two of the 1TB drives and put them in a RAID 0. (Remember, RE drives are "RAID Edition" for a reason.)

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs.

As for video cards, this was a tough one. I'm sticking with the FirePro v8800 mainly because I don't see a compelling reason to switch and it's a better value than the Quadro 5000, but a FirePro v7800 2GB, Quadro 4000 2GB or Quadro 5000 2.5GB would be valid choices, depending on needs.

Oh, one more thing. These Xeons use triple-channel memory and each CPU has its own memory controller. When using two of these CPUs, there are six memory channels, so the RAM used must be matched DIMMs in multiples of six. This configuration uses a set of 12 DIMMs.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

3D Workstations for CUDA Users

The Midrange (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

In many respects this machine is similar to the regular Midrange. In fact, if you're not using Vray RT-GPU, iray or another CUDA rendering packae, this build is worse than the one above because the FirePro video card is better for driving viewports in 3D apps. But with this version, what you get is:

-A motherboard that supports up to three video cards
-Dual Geforce GTX 460 cards with 2GB RAM onboard
-More power!

The 2GB GTX 460 is a great option for running software like this. It's the most memory you can put on a card that's not a Quadro, at only $260 each. A single Quadro 4000 card would cost $780 and while it would likely outperform this configuration in viewport performance, it would not run a CUDA renderer nearly as well.

If you want even more power, two GTX 470 or GTX 480 cards can be used with this configuration; however, a 1000 watt power supply would be highly recommended. Three GTX 480 cards, the configuration Chaosgroup used in their demo? The cost/benefit is against you, but you can do it; a 1200 watt power supply is needed. The drawback is neither the 470 nor the 480 are available with 2GB.

The High-End (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Similar to Midrange version for CUDA rendering, this config is worse than the regular High-End if you don't use a CUDA rendering solution.

I seriously considered including four GTX 460 cards in this system, but in the end the principle that it's best to put the same amount of power in fewer CPUs translates well to GPUs and two GTX ~~480's~~ 580's wins out. Still, with this MB you can do it, and part of the reason I've included such a high end MB is future-proofing; you can add a third GTX ~~480~~ 580 card, or a fourth (you might need a second power supply, which is a tricky thing to do) or at some later date upgrade to multiple cards of some hypothetical future type. A 1500 watt power supply and a motherboard that can fit four video cards ensure that your GPU selection will not be held back.

[Edit: The next update will be mid-month, but now that the market for GTX 580's has simmered down slightly I've included them instead of the 480's.]

Render Nodes

The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

If you run the numbers, you'll find that with current pricing it's possible to make a render node based on either an i7-980X or dual 12-core Opteron 6172's with reasonably similar amounts of rendering power per dollar. The Opteron box will cost a bit more than 50% more and render a bit less than 50% faster. If you want one render node, buy the one that fits your budget, but looking at the hypothetical comparison between two Opteron boxes and three i7 boxes, the two box solution has obvious advantages in saving space and electricity that will likely outweigh the three box solution's minor price/performance advantage.

I've provided the parts list for the Opteron solution. To build the i7 solution choose the High End but substitute the Opteron build's cheap video card, hard drive and peripherals, and the case and power supply from the Midrange system - with a single hard drive and low end video card, that case and power supply is enough to support the high end CPU.

But don't buy more than a couple of these. They quickly start to take up too much space and require too much maintenance. To add many nodes' worth of rendering power, you want a render farm. A farm is a collection of machines meant for rendering with, it's a must for complex animations and it should be done as a unit, based on racks, blades or other compact solutions and made for you by a company like Boxx. Get this if you want to add one or two render boxes, making individual nodes more practical than a farm.

Displays

A while back, one of my friends sent me a link to this article debunking pretty much every metric and slogan used in HDTV marketing. The market for LCD monitors is no less confusing, so concentrate on three things:

-Screen size.

-Resolution. This is not the problem it is in laptops, but what would you rather have - a 22" screen that's 1680x1050, or a 21.5" screen that's 1920x1080?

-IPS/PVA or TN. What you want here is an IPS or PVA panel, not a TN panel. Inexpensive monitors are TN panels, which have much worse color gamuts and viewing angles than better screens. A consumer LCD monitor likely isn't even processing and displaying color in 8 bits per channel, and if you move your desk chair 6 inches to the side the levels change.

So, here are a few options, all good quality IPS displays usable for professional graphics work:

-Eizo 24" CG243W. Let's get this out of the way first. This is a very expensive monitor with freakin' fantastic color quality. This monitor is appropriate for use in high end video, photography and publishing production environments. It is not necessary for most visualization are graphics work, but if you want the best that's available to you without costing more than your car, this is it. Pairs well with The Maxer.

-HP 22" ZR22W. This takes the spot that the Dell 2209WA used to occupy in my recommendations: a budget friendly model that beats a TN display and pairs well with the Intern and Budget systems. However, the newer HP model is a better panel, has a higher resolution and costs less. It's a winner at the lower end.

-HP 24" ZR24W and HP 30" ZR30W. As the names suggest, these are larger models from the same line as the ZR22W. All are great value options and significant steps up from consumer grade displays. You can size you ZR to your budget.

-In 27", I've previously recommended the Dell 27" U2711, but that's become hard to find. An excellent alternative is the NEC PA271w. With improved color reproduction and a resolution usually found in 30" displays, this Dell is a step up from the entry level IPS displays but more reasonable than the Eizo. Best with the High End or the Maxer.

-NEC 30" 3090WQXi. NEC's answer to the 30" Apple monitor. H-IPS panel for high end color and good viewing angles. A step up from the 30" HP, and a step up in price.

As usual, whatever you choose, calibrate it! We're not talking about one of those software functions where you look at the gray square and try to make it the same value as the lines, we're talking about a dedicated hardware calibration device. I use the Eye-One Display 2, but some users prefer the Color Munki, which can also be used with printers and projectors. I can't stress the importance of this enough - without calibration, you'll never be able to match your prints to your screen, whether you're using your system for 3D rendering, graphic design or photography.

GPU Rendering. Again.

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:08:00 +0000

The Month of Not-the-GPU

If GPU rendering has you confused, don't worry. You're not alone, and anyway, it's just not important yet. This is all getting talked a bit to death and I've probably written more about it on CGArchitect than about any other subject.

Here's how it stands. There are two categories of GPU rendering implementations right now, both somewhat useful but neither a complete solution to most architectural renderers' needs. These are brute force raytracing and game engine type interactive output.

Executive Summary

Don't make plans to give up on traditional rendering. As it stands, the usefulness of GPU solutions is quite limited.

Brute Force

First, brute force. This includes Vray RT-GPU, iray, Octane, Arion and probably others. Here's what I wrote in a recent CGArchitect thread on the subject:

Here's the problem with relying on the GPU to do "unbiased" (as if a little bias is such a bad thing, whatever those [PR people] were saying on that hype video about [that new CUDA render project] that we all saw, and no complaining, you know it's true) rendering. You compare a CPU and a GPU, architecturally, the CPU handles fewer simultaneous operations which can be quite complex, while the GPU handles many simultaneous operations that are not at all complex. Factors working against the GPU are lack of complexity, and the limitations of the concept of many in computation. GPUs have more transistors than CPUs, but only by a factor of two or three. A lot of those GPU transistors are going toward managing all the protocol for that absurd number of simultaneous operations. So the number of transistors that can be actively used for doing tasks isn't very different.

What this all adds up to is that the assertion that a Geforce card has far more computing power than an i7 is absurd on its face. What it has is much more very specialized capacity for doing a pretty small number of things.

Which is why it can, by hook (just monte carlo brute force it, you've got freakin' 800 threads) or by crook (just put the damnable model through DirectX already like we should have been doing years ago) either very quickly produce an image that you can't really use in a high end presentation, or very slowly produce one that you can. Which you've been able to do for years.

So don't put all your eggs in the GPU basket. Somebody's going to have to make some kind of breakthrough before they'll be useful for the same tasks as CPUs, and there is no way to tell when or if that will happen.

What I mean by all of this is that brute force GPU rendering has limitations that keep it from being as good as we'd hope for production rendering work. In practice, a skilled user of Vray, mental, Final Render, Cinema4d, etc., will make a better result that renders faster than a user of a brute force GPU renderer. If you've been hoping for a killer app, this is not it.

Brad Peebler from Luxology made a good video on this a few months back.

Game Engines

Direct3D, part of Microsoft's DirectX software, is a powerful 3D output engine built into Windows and modern video cards. There is a new generation of software emerging that brings in your models and puts them into a system based on the type of interactive 3D environment, using Direct3D, that most popular Windows video games use. This has the advantage that it uses the GPU for exactly the purpose for which it was designed, and actually requires no rendering at all. All 3D output is generated on the fly, allowing walkthroughs to be fully interactive.

This type of software includes Twinmotion 2 and Lumion. It runs on any good video card supporting DirectX. Current implementations will run on DirectX 10.1 hardware, but DirectX 11 hardware is better - a good new series Quadro, Geforce 4xx series, Radeon 5000 or 6000 series or current generation FirePro will be equally useful.

Unfortunately, there are a few downsides here as well. First, your clients will want to run the walkthrough on their own computers, which might not be sufficient, and you'll be forced to explain technical issues. Second, you don't get the full GI lighting and advanced rendering effects you're used to using. Third, interactive walkthroughs aren't run through Photoshop or video editing/compositing packages. No post - you need direct output that is presentation worthy. And fourth, the software is not well matured - Lumion is not in release as of this writing, and Twinmotion users are complaining of bugs, though this should all clear up in the near future.

Workstations Explanation (Updated)

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 15:46:00 +0000

I realize it's been a while since I wrote the original article on workstation methodology, and a lot has changed since then. Here it is again, reflecting the changes and new additions.

Many Options

A typical workstation configuration article contains several options, which can get a bit confusing, so what you want to consider are your budget and your needs. If you're buying for a firm, go over your staff and their tasks to determine the most computationally demanding tasks each team member works on. A typical firm will want a mix of these configurations - perhaps your bookkeeper, assistants and interns will have Intern systems, your marketer will need a Photoshopper, anybody doing mostly CAD will get a Budget while 3D and BIM users get a Midrange box and your heaviest 3D users and animators will need a High End or Maxer. A Render Node or two can be added if needed, but if you really want to farm animations, try Boxx or outsource.

Here are some of the system types that are typically included

For Light Use:

The Intern: This is the low-end system an architecture firm can buy for an employee who is not expected to do 3D work or work in Revit or with very large Photoshop files. It's great for CAD, Microsoft Office and light SketchUp work but should not be used for running a complex BIM package or 3DSMax. The price point will be as low as possible without resorting to sub-standard parts.

For Marketing, Photography and Other Adobe Type Use:

The Photoshopper: This is the system for users with heavy graphics needs that don't involve 3D and BIM. Adobe type use doesn't rely rendering or 3D display, it requires running operations with one or two threads on very large files. The Photoshopper is optimized for that type of work.

For BIM and 3D Use:

The Budget: This will be the least expensive system using commonly available parts that can handle the common tasks in architectural visualization work, including modeling and rendering, and work with substantial, multi layered Photoshop files and large desktop publishing documents. Price should come in around $1000.

The Midrange: This is the system that most professionals working full time in 3D modeling, Photoshop, CAD and BIM should consider. It should be powerful enough for all common 3D modeling tasks, for rendering still images and for running sequences of stills or basic animations overnight. Price should come in under $2000.

The High End: For users with larger budgets requiring the most power (within reason), this configuration will use high-end parts such as dual CPUs, workstation class video cards and solid-state disks. It should be up to the most demanding complex modeling and animation tasks, and because it has dual CPUs should render approximately twice as quickly as the midrange system. The price point can float, but expect it to be above $3000.

The Maxer: Several months ago I brought down the cost of the high end system by making it single CPU. Using the new (at the time) 6-core i7 made it cheaper and faster - but some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed. It seems I'd been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. So this is the configuration for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer. No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.

For Rendering Only:

The Render Node: This is for when you want an extra box or two to farm your renders to. Don't try to make a proper "farm" out of these - they take up too much space - for that, try Boxx or outsource.And don't try to make a workstation out of this sort of hardware, it's not good enough at single threaded operations to justify its use in anything but a render node or a server (and architecture firms don't usually need this sort of processing in a server).

A number of render nodes can be put together to make a render farm. I'll provide some information on how to do so, and to give you a baseline for comparison, but when you get to this level of complexity it often turns out that you're better off buying from a specialty company like Boxx. (See the link on the right, and tell them we sent you.)

Laptops update

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Laptops, revisited

The laptop market turns over quicker than... actually, I'm not going to finish that sentence. It seems that what I wrote in August is already out of date - some of those models are no longer available, and just to make sure we're paying attention the specs and part names are all different. Also, it's interesting (to me at least) that since I mostly linked to Amazon, those so-two-months-ago models look more alive than they actually are - because Amazon has "marketplace" sellers, products stick around there longer than they do in normal stores. But still, it's time to revisit the topic.

My recommendation to most graphics people

Go to an Apple Store or the Apple web site and order a 15" Macbook Pro with the high res non-glare screen. (They call it "anti-glare" but that sort of implies they took special steps to make it not glare, when what they really did was just not cover it with glass.) It's got the best screen you'll find in a laptop, except for a few obscure/heavy/cumbersome models that have an IPS display, and the screen calibrates very well. The hardware is very well optimized, with an Intel onboard GPU and an nVidia GPU and a system for switching between them as needed to balance speed and battery life; i5 and i7 CPUs; a large battery; and excellent ergonomics. I have one myself, and I just installed a trial copy of AutoCAD for OSX on it and can attest that it exists. Moreover, it does a great job on Adobe Creative Suite 5 and Aperture is fantastic for "serious" photography needs. This is certainly the closest thing to a perfect laptop currently on the market.

But most of you are going to want Windows notebooks, because that's what you use in the office, and fortunately for you these are much less terrible than they were just a few years ago, so here goes.

This time I'm breaking it down by size:

11.6" Ultraportables

I'm not going to address 10" netbooks. They're not good for anything to do with graphics or professional grade architecture apps, so they're outside the scope of this site. On the other hand, there's a species of notebooks with 11.6" screens that are almost as tiny as netbooks, run 64-bit Windows and have good enough specs for some graphics work. I have an Asus with a 1.2GHz dual-core Celeron, Intel graphics and 2GB RAM, and though it spends most of its time running Microsoft OneNote it also has its screen calibrated and is perfectly adequate for running Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. I took it to Europe this summer and offloaded my D90's memory card daily. Unfortunately, with the spec bumps these have been getting, the days when you could buy a reasonable one under $400 are over.

My recommendation: Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T. Neither the most nor the least expensive in this size, this one comes with a 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB, Wifi and Bluetooth, 64-bit Windows 7, an 8-hour battery and safe-for-work aesthetics.

Also available: Alienware M11x. These are more expensive, but some people will find them worth it because they have a Geforce GPU with dedicated memory and Optimus, and an i5 with a very good Turbo Boost ability. The reason I can't recommend them is that they are catastrophically ugly. They have the embossed alien head, they're unnecessarily thick and they glow red. It's the Porsche Cayenne of tiny laptops. I don't know about you, but I couldn't take that to a client meeting and keep a straight face.

13-15" Medium Sized Laptops

Recommended: 15.6" Asus G51JX-X5. Okay, now I know I just dissed the Alienware for being monumentally, shockingly ugly, and now I'm recommending another funny looking, pretty thick gamer laptop. How can I do this? Look at the specs on this thing. The 15.6" screen is 1920x1080, it's got a Geforce 360M with 1GB, 6GB RAM and a quad core i7. Budget-friendlier option: the slightly older G51JX-X3 with dual core i5. And at least this one doesn't glow.

Recommended: 13.3" Asus U33JC-A1 Bamboo Series. This one is still hard to find in stock. Because it's just that nice. I'm recommending it anyway on the off chance you find one, or don't mind waiting. Meanwhile you can get the 14" model, which is slightly faster and has a 10-hour battery but I prefer the idea of getting almost as much power in a smaller package. Both come with a Geforce 310M.

Also available: 13.3" Toshiba R700-S1331. In some ways a more powerful option, this one has a dual core i7 and solid state disk. It doesn't get a Recommended because it's only available with Intel onboard graphics.

Large

Recommended: Anything from Boxx. These guys have a way with large, high powered mobile workstations. Seriously consider them if you want to run Max, Revit or other high demand software on the go. These are serious, industrial strength machines for users with serious, industrial grade requirements.

I'm not going to recommend a specific model or configuration, because Boxx does its best work over the phone. Call them, tell them who sent you and what you're looking for, have a chat and be pleasantly surprised that you're talking with somebody who knows what Revit is for. You're paying for that level of service, so you might as well take advantage of it.

(Note to anybody who got here from a graphic design or photography site: Adobe Creative Suite is not considered high demand software for these purposes. Boxx will happily sell you a killer Photoshop notebook, but it will be overkill, with optimizations in areas you don't need, and you'll pay for that in money, weight and battery life.)

Recommended: HP Envy 17-1011NR. There are many companies making a laptop just like this: 17" 1920x1080 screen, quad core i7, 8GB, with a high end Radeon GPU and a large hard drive, in the $1400-$1600 range. They're quite powerful. One model I benchmarked had an i7-720QM and a Radeon 5870, and scored 2.95 in Cinebench rendering and 25.6 in OpenGL, which is very good for a laptop.

I've looked at at least a dozen variants on this concept and despite all the jokes about the name - really, what were they thinking, making a Macbook Pro knockoff and calling it "envy" - the HP is currently the standout. It's not too huge, it has Blu-Ray, the specs are right for CG and graphics users, and it doesn't look too ridiculous to bring to a client meeting. The screen is quite good and it has USB 3.0, eSATA, universal memory card reader, multiple display outputs, aluminum chassis and premium speakers. What more could you want? Battery life. The 2.5 hour battery is standard in this class, but I wish they'd do better.

October 2010 Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:06:00 +0000

The Month of the GPU

GPU rendering is hotter than my fantasy football team these days, with Vray 2.0 imminent, iray for 3DSMax out and TwinMotion 2 teasing up a storm. Regular readers and CGArchitect forum members may know that I remain unconvinced: while it's obvious that GPUs have an important place in future workflows, as Brad from Luxology said more eloquently (and with more supporting research) than I can there are still some issues that limit its usefulness in making the sort of production quality renders that have become standard in arch vis over the last few years.

With the GPU you get many parallel processors that are quite limited in the complexity of the calculations they can do, so most of the implementations so far have been Monte Carlo path tracers with some of the more advanced shader effects such as SSS missing. And in some cases it's not even clear that it's very fast.

For this type of GPU renderer, an nVidia card or three with a large amount of memory seems to be best. iray is of course nVidia only (mental images having been bought by nVidia a while back) and while Vray RT-GPU is written in OpenCL the beta is currently nVidia only, with ATI compatibility being a work in progress. I've written previously on the importance of healthy competition in the GPU market, so I hope Chaosgroup gets this done before full release and gives ATI users an option in this area.

Twinmotion has a different approach. Technical information is a bit thin but it looks something like a DirectX 10 game engine set up for visualization. We'll be keeping an eye on it. It runs on current and previous generation nVidia and ATI hardware and eats memory for breakfast.

In other GPU news, the next generation of Radeons is set to roll out in the next few months and will bump some specs, but the real upgrades will come next year when 28nm process goes mainstream and memory upgrades are had all around.

The Workstations

Since the last round of workstations I put out a mid-month update on builds for Vray 2.0. This month I'm integrating those recommendations, with a regular version and a Vray RT-GPU / iray version of some of the configs. I know this is a bit confusing, but until the market settles down a bit and it becomes more clear what everybody's using and what hardware they need for it, this is going to continue to be a problem. The hardware for Vray RT-GPU and iray is more expensive and uses more electricity, and with multiple Quadro cards being outside most budgets the Geforce cards you need to make it feasible don't work as well in 3D apps as the FirePro cards I've been recommending. So if you don't want to use those programs, stick with the regular versions.

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This is a bit cheaper than it was last month, due to a few price drops, but there has been little movement in this hardware and it's essentially the same. With a three-core AMD CPU, 4GB of RAM, a Radeon card with DirectX 11 and 1GB, and 64-bit Windows 7, this build will fit the needs of both your intern and your senior partner who doesn't use CAD. You can build something cheaper, but I don't recommend it.

The Photoshopper
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The photographer, the graphic designer and the photoshopper have different requirements from the renderer. This work involves lots of loading and saving of many large files, and CPU intensive operation that do not make efficient use of many threads. You need more power in fewer cores, a lot of memory and a very good hard drive. What you don't need is an overpowered video card - the only app you might care about that actually uses the video card is Aperture, and that won't run on this anyway because it's a Mac exclusive - or a ton of CPU cores. This build's very quiet version of the Radeon 5670 is going to work well with the Sonata case in keeping the background noise down so you can concentrate on your Photoshop and your Daft Punk, or whatever it is you graphic designers are listening to these days.

Since we're going quiet, the Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU cooler fits this situation well. This build will be barely noticeable to your ears or your electric bill.

The two RE3 (Raid Edition) hard drives have improved life expectancy over normal hard drives, necessary for reliable use in a RAID 0, which is the goal here. Use RAID to improve read/write speed on those large PSD files. Even with the RE3 drive, I would be remiss not to say that you really do need an external backup system. In an office environment, this can be as simple as a nightly backup of project files to the server.

Now here's where I'm going to lose some of you. This month I've upgraded from an i7 to an i5. Why? The i5-680 is a dual core with most of the same architecture as the i7, and a base clock of 3.6GHz that goes over 3.8GHz with Turbo Boost! How else are you going to get that without overclocking? (If you do overclock, by all means go to the i7-875k, upgrade the memory to DDR3-2000 and go nuts.) Don't worry, there's no shame in the i5 - I own two myself.

Whatever else you do, an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 is indispensable, and a Wacom Intuos4 Tablet is a very good idea. Consider an IPS display from the Displays section below.

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Budget is due for an upgrade, and it's getting the new 3.0GHz version of the AMD six-core and 8GB of RAM. The higher end systems still outperform it, but I'm more confident than ever in saying that you can build a legit rendering box at the $1000 price point.

I thought long and hard about video card for this build. (So you don't have to - because, really, who wants to think long and hard about stuff like that?) The Radeon 5750 has been the best at this price point for a while, uses surprisingly little energy and has an impressive array of outputs. It's fantastic. I have one myself. But last month nVidia introduced the Geforce 450, and a bunch of rebates started turning up on the Radeon 5770. If you're a Cinema4D user, no question, you want the 5770. It's a no brainer. This one is currently $125 with rebate, which is nuts.

But MIR's don't count in these part lists, and the new Geforce 450, at the same price as the 5750, has identical performance and power consumption to the 5750 in most circumstances. (I'm going to go ahead and blow an extra $10 on a version with a higher clock speed.) The Geforce 450 adds CUDA, which some of you are going to insist on caring about, no matter what I say about proprietary specs.

The Midrange (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange features AMD's higher end 3.2GHz six-core CPU. (If you're an overclocker, this CPU has its multiplier unlocked, but you'll want faster RAM to take advantage of it.) The motherboard is a solid Asus choice that can take two video cards at full speed.

Since I'm splitting the Midrange into regular and Vray RT-GPU / iray editions, the video card choice is easier than it's been in months. For this money, for a video card to drive your 3D viewports and AutoCAD or Revit without doubling as a space heater for your office, the v5800 is the best thing. By not caring about CUDA, you get a lot of advantages in the viewport department. Serious Cinema4D users should also opt for this configuration.

Use the Caviar Black hard drive as your C drive and the Green drive for archiving and extra storage, and make sure you're letting that Lian-Li case cool the drives by leaving air space above and below them - the Caviar Black runs warmer than any of the other drives listed on this page. Use one of the incremental backup or file sync programs to keep copies of your project files on both drives for another layer of safety. I didn't want to blow the budget here, but for speed, one thing you can do is substitute the hard drives used in the Photoshop workstation and make them a RAID 0.

The Midrange (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

In many respects this machine is similar to the regular Midrange. In fact, if you're not using Vray RT-GPU, iray or another CUDA rendering packae, this build is worse than the one above because the FirePro video card is better for driving viewports in 3D apps. But with this version, what you get is:

-A motherboard that supports up to three video cards
-Dual Geforce GTX 460 cards with 2GB RAM onboard
-More power!

The 2GB GTX 460 is a great option for running software like this. It's the most memory you can put on a card that's not a Quadro, at only $260 each. A single Quadro 4000 card would cost $780 and while it would likely outperform this configuration in viewport performance, it would not run a CUDA renderer nearly as well.

If you want even more power, two GTX 480 cards can be used with this configuration; however, a 1000 watt power supply would be highly recommended. Three GTX 480 cards, the configuration Chaosgroup used in their demo? The cost/benefit is against you, but you can do it; a 1200 watt power supply is needed.

The High-End (Regular Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The array of video cards that could go into a computer at this price point is dizzying:

High end consumer level video cards:

-Radeon 5870 2GB version
-Geforce 480 1.5GB

Midrange workstation video cards:

-ATI FirePro v5800 1GB
-ATI FirePro v7800 2GB
-nVidia Quadro 4000 2GB

Remembering that this is not the system for CUDA users, I'm going to stick with the v7800 as the recommendation for most users, for the same reasons I recommend the v5800 for the Midrange system, but depending on your needs anything on that list could make sense. The Quadro 4000 would be just as good and h CUDA, but is more expensive.

The area with fewer options is CPUs. A single six-core CPU is most appropriate at this budget level, and though Intel has only two options and they start at $900, they have a significant performance advantage over AMD. I'm sticking with the i7-980X for its speed advantage over the 970, which makes it a slightly better value in terms of rendering speed per overall system price, and the overclocking advantage of its unlocked multiplier, for those who are into that kind of thing.

Install your OS and software on the SSD and use the 1TB drive for your working files. For a bit more speed, order two of the 1TB drives and put them in a RAID 0. (Remember, RE drives are "RAID Edition" for a reason.)

The High-End (CUDA Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Similar to Midrange version for CUDA rendering, this config is worse than the regular High-End if you don't use a CUDA rendering solution.

I seriously considered including four GTX 460 cards in this system, but in the end the principle that it's best to put the same amount of power in fewer CPUs translates well to GPUs and two GTX 480's wins out. Still, with this MB you can do it, and part of the reason I've included such a high end MB is future-proofing; you can add a third GTX 480 card, or a fourth (you might need a second power supply, which is a tricky thing to do) or at some later date upgrade to multiple cards of some hypothetical future type. A 1500 watt power supply and a motherboard that can fit four video cards ensure that your GPU selection will not be held back.

The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

If you run the numbers, you'll find that with current pricing it's possible to make a render node based on either an i7-980X or dual 12-core Opteron 6172's with reasonably similar amounts of rendering power per dollar. The Opteron box will cost a bit more than 50% more and render a bit less than 50% faster. If you want one render node, buy the one that fits your budget, but looking at the hypothetical comparison between two Opteron boxes and three i7 boxes, the two box solution has obvious advantages in saving space and electricity that will likely outweigh the three box solution's minor price/performance advantage.

I've provided the parts list for the Opteron solution. To build the i7 solution choose the High End but substitute the Opteron build's cheap video card, hard drive and peripherals, and the case and power supply from the Midrange system - with a single hard drive and low end video card, that case and power supply is enough to support the high end CPU.

But don't buy more than a couple of these. They quickly start to take up too much space and require too much maintenance. To add many nodes' worth of rendering power, you want a render farm. A farm is a collection of machines meant for rendering with, it's a must for complex animations and it should be done as a unit, based on racks, blades or other compact solutions and made for you by a company like Boxx. Get this if you want to add one or two render boxes, making individual nodes more practical than a farm.

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Several months ago I brought down the cost of the high end system by making it single CPU, and some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed. It seems I'd been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. So this is the configuration for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer. No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.

Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs.

As for video cards, this was a tough one. I'm sticking with the FirePro v8800 mainly because I don't see a compelling reason to switch and it's a better value than the Quadro 5000, but a FirePro v7800 2GB, Quadro 4000 2GB or Quadro 5000 2.5GB would be valid choices, depending on needs.

Oh, one more thing. These Xeons use triple-channel memory and each CPU has its own memory controller. When using two of these CPUs, there are six memory channels, so the RAM used must be matched DIMMs in multiples of six. This configuration uses a set of 12 DIMMs.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

Displays

A while back, one of my friends sent me a link to this article debunking pretty much every metric and slogan used in HDTV marketing. The market for LCD monitors is no less confusing, so concentrate on three things:

-Screen size.

-Resolution. This is not the problem it is in laptops, but what would you rather have - a 22" screen that's 1680x1050, or a 21.5" screen that's 1920x1080?

-IPS/PVA or TN. What you want here is an IPS or PVA panel, not a TN panel. Inexpensive monitors are TN panels, which have much worse color gamuts and viewing angles than better screens. A consumer LCD monitor likely isn't even processing and displaying color in 8 bits per channel, and if you move your desk chair 6 inches to the side the levels change.

So, here are a few options, all good quality IPS displays usable for professional graphics work:

-Eizo 24" CG243W. Let's get this out of the way first. This is a very expensive monitor with freakin' fantastic color quality. This monitor is appropriate for use in high end video, photography and publishing production environments. It is not necessary for most visualization are graphics work, but if you want the best that's available to you without costing more than your car, this is it. Pairs well with The Maxer.

-HP 22" ZR22W. This takes the spot that the Dell 2209WA used to occupy in my recommendations: a budget friendly model that beats a TN display and pairs well with the Intern and Budget systems. However, the newer HP model is a better panel, has a higher resolution and costs less. It's a winner at the lower end.

-HP 24" ZR24W and HP 30" ZR30W. As the names suggest, these are larger models from the same line as the ZR22W. All are great value options and significant steps up from consumer grade displays. You can size you ZR to your budget.

-In 27", I've previously recommended the Dell 27" U2711, but that's become hard to find. An excellent alternative is the NEC PA271w. With improved color reproduction and a resolution usually found in 30" displays, this Dell is a step up from the entry level IPS displays but more reasonable than the Eizo. Best with the High End or the Maxer.

-NEC 30" 3090WQXi. NEC's answer to the 30" Apple monitor. H-IPS panel for high end color and good viewing angles. A step up from the 30" HP, and a step up in price.

As usual, whatever you choose, calibrate it! We're not talking about one of those software functions where you look at the gray square and try to make it the same value as the lines, we're talking about a dedicated hardware calibration device. I use the Eye-One Display 2, but some users prefer the Color Munki, which can also be used with printers and projectors. I can't stress the importance of this enough - without calibration, you'll never be able to match your prints to your screen, whether you're using your system for 3D rendering, graphic design or photography.

Vray 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:56:00 +0000

Vray 2.0 has been announced, and it's interesting because it has both GPU (for previews with the RT-GPU engine) and CPU (for the production renderer) requirements. Additionally, though the RT-GPU engine runs on OpenCL which is supported by both AMD and nVidia GPUs, the current version only runs on nVidia GPUs that support CUDA.

So, two factors:

GPU: This applies only to the RT-GPU engine. The production renderer does not use the GPU.

Fermi cards are recommended. A Fermi card is any Geforce 400-series card or any Quadro 4000, 5000 or 6000 card, but not Quadro FX cards or earlier Geforce cards. (Most earlier cards from the past few years can run CUDA, but they don't give you as much bang-for-buck.) According to forum posts by Chaosgroup admins, they are working on getting the engine running on AMD hardware, but for now anybody buying a workstation to use with Vray 2.0 should restrict their GPU selection to nVidia.

As with any GPU rendering solution, the amount of memory on the video card is important. The newer cards ship with at least 1GB, and 2GB cards are easy to come by.

But be aware that the RT engines are not for all work - there are important features of the production renderer that are not present in the RT engines, so don't skimp on the CPU. Anybody using the full capabilities of Vray 2.0 is going to need plenty of CPU power as well.

CPU: This applies only to the RT-CPU and production renderers. The RT-GPU engine relies much more on the GPU and CPU performance is not the controlling factor.

My previous advice on CPUs applies here, since the Budget workstation and up are designed for use with efficiently multithreading render engines such as Cinema4D, mental ray and Vray 1.x, and the CPU requirements for Vray 2.0 have not changed. Vray 2.0's production renderer will max out the utilization on a multi-core AMD or Intel CPU.

Workstations: In some ways these are going to look very familiar to regular readers, since I'm keeping the usual requirements but adding nVidia GPUs to support Vray RT for GPU, where I normally include ATI FirePro video cards at these price points. The major differences between these two "Vray 2.0 Edition" workstations and the standard configurations (which, by the way, can be found in the September Workstations link on the right of this page) are attributable to GPU handling. Both have upgraded motherboards with best-in-class PCI-Express x16 slots, and upgraded power supplies to handle the extra power requirements of multiple GPUs.

The Midrange (Vray 2.0 Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

See comments on The Midrange in the September Workstations article - I'm not going to repeat them here, but aside from everything that's about video cards, they apply. The upgrades are:

-A motherboard that supports up to three video cards
-Dual Geforce GTX 460 cards with 2GB RAM onboard
-More power!

The 2GB GTX 460 is a great option for running software like this. It's the most memory you can put on a card that's not a Quadro, at only $260 each. A single Quadro 4000 card would cost $780 and while it would likely outperform this configuration in viewport performance, it would not run Vray RT for GPU nearly as well.

If you want even more power, two GTX 480 cards can be used with this configuration; however, a 1000 watt power supply would be highly recommended. Three GTX 480 cards, the configuration Chaosgroup used in their demo? The cost/benefit is against you, but you can do it; a 1200 watt power supply is needed.

The High-End (Vray 2.0 Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Again, see the comments on the September High End system.

I seriously considered including four GTX 460 cards in this system, but in the end the principle that it's best to put the same amount of power in fewer CPUs translates well to GPUs and two GTX 480's wins out. Still, with this MB you can do it, and part of the reason I've included such a high end MB is future-proofing; you can add a third GTX 480 card, or a fourth (with a second power supply), or at some later date upgrade to multiple cards of some hypothetical future type. A 1500 watt power supply and a motherboard that can fit four video cards ensure that your GPU selection will not be held back.

September 2010 Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:38:00 +0000

Since the August Workstations article I've written about home PCs, Laptops and the interesting nVidia GTX 460 2GB. That video card (available on Amazon.com or Newegg) is immediately useful to Octane Render users and the otherwise pretty small set of users who have software with CUDA requirements; apparently there are some kinks being ironed out of the CUDA implementation being used by Octane that (as of August 2010) don't allow access to all cores on a GF104 GPU; still, this is being actively worked on, and the 2GB 460 is so appealing for CUDA use, you wouldn't be going wrong if you bought one anyway.

The Workstations

A few updates this month. The Budget system has always been a good option for low energy consumption; this month I'm upgrading it some, and making it silent as well; with the Antec Sonata case and the excellent power optimizations of the latest AMD/ATI hardware, you can fill your office with these and make a very low impact on your noise level and electric bills. Intel still has no 6-core CPUs under $900 announced, so AMD continues as the price/performance leader for everything up to the Midrange config.

One more thing. I get questions about whether components from manufacturers others than the ones listed can be substituted, and I've noticed that I have a tendency to recommend components from certain brands, such as Asus, XFX, Lian-Li and Antec. I don't want to give the wrong impression here - there are many good vendors for all of these components, and none of these companies are site sponsors, but all things being equal these are my go-to brands because I've never been disappointed by any of their products, or by their customer service. I'm going to continue to go with those manufacturers when one of their parts meets the requirements and makes budgetary sense, but if there's another vendor you prefer you an almost always substitute another company's version of the same part without adverse effects.

What I don't recommend, except where budgetary constraints require them, are cheap cases and power supplies. A poorly made case is likely to add to the time it takes you to assemble to PC, make servicing the PC more difficult and contribute to overheating which can reduce the life expectancy of the parts and lead to hard drive failure. A bad power supply might provide inconsistent voltage and lead to operational glitches or failure of motherboards, memory or CPUs.

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Intern budget is up slightly, but the improvements are worth going slightly over the $600 mark. (Don't worry, these are not changes that make the intern's job easier, they're changes that make the IT department's job easier.) Availability is becoming a problem with the Athlon II 440, and now we're looking at a $5 difference, so the Intern is being upgraded to the 445. Taking my own advice, the case and power supply are improved for reliability and the video card is an XFX that will get you reasonable performance with low power and noise. The 5550 is actually not ATI's least expensive 40nm, DirectX 11 GPU, but the 5450 is too low end, even for the Intern. If for whatever reason you want nVidia, look at the GT 220. The AMD CPU beats the Intels at this price, the motherboard is good but a money saver. This is the entry level AutoCAD, Microsoft Office and light Photoshop system, and at about $600 it's the lowest I'd go in an office setting.

The Budget (3D/Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

As with last month, I'm splitting the Budget line into one machine for rendering use, and another for users who do photography and other intensive graphics tasks but not rendering. What they have in common is that both are practical, energy efficient and budget-minded approaches. Both of these configurations get a new case and power supply this month that will improve reliability, make assembly a bit easier and make the computers run quieter.

Here is why there are two different recommendations at this level:

There is an important distinction between CPUs for rendering, and CPUs for other uses. Current render engines are very efficient multitaskers - they're able to use all of your CPU's GHz, regardless of how many cores those GHz are spread across. Most other software is not this efficient, but most other software - web browsers, Microsoft Office, the usual stuff - doesn't require even the Budget level of performance, and is perfectly happy on the Intern box or on my netbook. (Granted, it's a very nice netbook, but still...) The primary exceptions are the sorts of apps a photographer or graphic designer might use. Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator can weigh down a single core, and there are occasions when they utilize a few cores, but to put a 6-core CPU in a Photoshop box when a 4-core costing less money will outperform it would be unwise.

So, the first of the two Budget-level machines is the machine for those who will hit the Render button.

The AMD 1055T remains the price/performance winner at $200. The video card is upgraded to a Radeon 5750. Be sure to get your ATI drivers from the web site, not the included CD - recent driver versions fix a glaring bug in 2D performance. (This goes for all Radeon 5xxx series GPUs.)

The Budget (Photoshop Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The photographer, the graphic designer and the photoshopper have different requirements from the renderer. This work involves lots of loading and saving of many large files, and CPU intensive operation that do not make efficient use of many threads. You need more power in fewer cores, a lot of memory and a very good hard drive. What you don't need is an overpowered video card - the only app you might care about that actually uses the video card is Aperture, and that won't run on this anyway because it's a Mac exclusive. This month I've gone with a very quiet version of the Radeon 5670 that's going to work well with the Sonata case in keeping the background noise down so you can concentrate on your Photoshop and your Daft Punk, or whatever it is you graphic designers are listening to these days. Since we're going quiet, the Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU cooler fits this situation well.

The two RE3 (Raid Edition) hard drives have improved life expectancy over normal hard drives, necessary for reliable use in a RAID 0, which is the goal here. Use RAID to improve read/write speed on those large PSD files. Even with the RE3 drive, I would be remiss not to say that you really do need an external backup system. In an office environment, this can be as simple as a nightly backup of project files to the server.

The i7-870 is an excellent option for Photoshop use, but if you're feeling adventurous you can gain even more performance by choosing the i7-875K, DDR3-2000 memory instead of DDR3-1600, and through a combination of increasing the memory speed and dropping the multiplier in the BIOS (possible on a K series CPU), overclock the RAM instead of the CPU. This is an advanced technique.

Whatever else you do, an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 is indispensable, and a Wacom Intuos4 Tablet is a very good idea. Consider an IPS display from the Displays section below.

The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange features AMD's higher end 3.2GHz six-core CPU. Hardware tweakers will love this CPU, which has the same unlocked multiplier feature as the i7-875K, and it's a bit of an obvious choice - it will hold its own in single-threaded operations with its Turbo Core feature and for rendering there's nothing that beats it in this price class. The motherboard is the newest model, with a few new features like front-panel USB 3.0 ports. All the SATA ports are 6GB/s, and there are three PCIE-x16 slots in case you ever want to go nuts on the GPUs.

But here is where we have to start making some decisions about video cards. The question I got the most of last month was whether it was really best, when spending about $400, to get the FirePro v5800, or whether to get a Radeon 5870, or a Geforce 470, or a Quadro FX 1800, and the answer is, there's no one answer. If you need CUDA, the Geforce 470 (or two 460's). If you want the fastest GPU for the money and don't care about workstation class and software certifications, the 5870. If you do care about certifications but must buy nVidia, the FX 1800. But for this money, for a video card to drive your 3D viewports and AutoCAD or Revit without doubling as a space heater for your office, the v5800 is the best thing.

Use the Caviar Black hard drive as your C drive and the Green drive for archiving and extra storage, and make sure you're letting that Lian-Li case cool the drives by leaving air space above and below them - the Caviar Black runs warmer than any of the other drives listed on this page. Use one of the incremental backup or file sync programs to keep copies of your project files on both drives for another layer of safety. I didn't want to blow the budget here, but for speed, one thing you can do is substitute the hard drives used in the Photoshop workstation and make them a RAID 0.

The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Now that nVidia's shipped the new Quadro 4000, there is a full range of video card options in the right price-point ballpark for this configuration. So how do we choose? People with heavy GPU computing needs - and at this point, this means Octane users, software developers and people in beta programs - should consider multiple Geforce 4xx cards. For the rest of us, GPU computing is still not enough of a factor to base a decision on, and what we need in a video card is 3D display performance.

At this level, here are some good options:

High end consumer level video cards:

-Radeon 5870 2GB version
-Geforce 480 1.5GB
-Multiple Geforce 460 2GB cards

Midrange workstation video cards:

-ATI FirePro v5800 1GB
-ATI FirePro v7800 2GB
-nVidia Quadro 4000 2GB

I'm still impressed with the value of the ATI line and I'm going to stick with the v7800 as the recommendation for most users, but depending on your needs anything on that list could make sense.

The area with fewer options is CPUs. A single six-core CPU is most appropriate at this budget level, and though Intel has only two options and they start at $900, they have a significant performance advantage over AMD. I'm sticking with the i7-980X for its speed advantage over that 970, which makes it a slightly better value in terms of rendering speed per overall system price, and the overclocking advantage of its unlocked multiplier, for those who are into that kind of thing.

Install your OS and software on the SSD and use the 1TB drive for your working files. For a bit more speed, order two of the 1TB drives and put them in a RAID 0.

The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

If you run the numbers, you'll find that with current pricing it's possible to make a render node based on either an i7-980X or dual 12-core Opteron 6172's with reasonably similar amounts of rendering power per dollar. The Opteron box will cost a bit more than 50% more and render a bit less than 50% faster. If you want one render node, buy the one that fits your budget, but looking at the hypothetical comparison between two Opteron boxes and three i7 boxes, the two box solution has obvious advantages in saving space and electricity that will likely outweigh the three box solution's minor price/performance advantage.

I've provided the parts list for the Opteron solution To build the i7 solution choose the High End but substitute the Opteron build's cheap video card, hard drive and peripherals, and the case and power supply from the Midrange system - with a single hard drive and low end video card, that case and power supply is enough to support the high end CPU.

But don't buy more than a couple of these. They quickly start to take up too much space and require too much maintenance. To add many nodes' worth of rendering power, you want a render farm. A farm is a collection of machines meant for rendering with, it's a must for complex animations and it should be done as a unit, based on racks, blades or other compact solutions and made for you by a company like Boxx. Get this if you want to add one or two render boxes, making individual nodes more practical than a farm.

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Several months ago I brought down the cost of the high end system by making it single CPU, and some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed. It seems I'd been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. So this is the configuration for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer.

No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.

Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs. The FirePro v8800 is a new addition - a "pro" version of the Radeon 5870, the fastest single GPU available (with 1600 stream processes and 2GB memory) and the 24GB of RAM in twelve slots will ensure that you're never held back by lack of memory. For an added bonus, put the two SSD's and the two hard drives in two RAIDs.

On video cards, the same thing I wrote for the High End applies. I'm sticking with the FirePro v8800 mainly because I don't see a compelling reason to switch, but a FirePro v7800 2GB,
Quadro 4000 2GB or the more powerful Quadro 5000 2.5GB or multiple Geforce cards or a very high end Radeon or two would be valid choices, depending on needs.

Oh, one more thing. These Xeons use triple-channel memory and each CPU has its own memory controller. When using two of these CPUs, there are six memory channels, so the RAM used must be matched DIMMs in multiples of six. This configuration uses a set of 12 DIMMs.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

Displays

A while back, one of my friends sent me a link to this article debunking pretty much every metric and slogan used in HDTV marketing. The market for LCD monitors is no less confusing, so concentrate on three things:

-Screen size.

-Resolution. This is not the problem it is in laptops, but what would you rather have - a 22" screen that's 1680x1050, or a 21.5" screen that's 1920x1080?

-IPS/PVA or TN. What you want here is an IPS or PVA panel, not a TN panel. Inexpensive monitors are TN panels, which have much worse color gamuts and viewing angles than better screens. A consumer LCD monitor likely isn't even processing and displaying color in 8 bits per channel, and if you move your desk chair 6 inches to the side the levels change.

So, here are a few options, all good quality IPS displays usable for professional graphics work:

-Eizo 24" CG243W. Let's get this out of the way first. This is a very expensive monitor with freakin' fantastic color quality. This monitor is appropriate for use in high end video, photography and publishing production environments. It is not necessary for most visualization are graphics work, but if you want the best that's available to you without costing more than your car, this is it. Pairs well with The Maxer.

-HP 22" ZR22W. This takes the spot that the Dell 2209WA used to occupy in my recommendations: a budget friendly model that beats a TN display and pairs well with the Intern and Budget systems. However, the newer HP model is a better panel, has a higher resolution and costs less. It's a winner at the lower end.

-HP 24" ZR24W and HP 30" ZR30W. As the names suggest, these are larger models from the same line as the ZR22W. All are great value options and significant steps up from consumer grade displays. You can size you ZR to your budget.

-Dell 27" U2711. With improved color reproduction and a resolution usually found in 30" displays, this Dell is a step up from the entry level IPS displays but more reasonable than the Eizo. Best with the High End or the Maxer.

-NEC 30" 3090WQXi. NEC's answer to the 30" Apple monitor. H-IPS panel for high end color and good viewing angles. A step up from the 30" HP, and a step up in price.

As usual, whatever you choose, calibrate it! We're not talking about one of those software functions where you look at the gray square and try to make it the same value as the lines, we're talking about a dedicated hardware calibration device. I use the Eye-One Display 2, but some users prefer the Color Munki, which can also be used with printers and projectors. I can't stress the importance of this enough - without calibration, you'll never be able to match your prints to your screen, whether you're using your system for 3D rendering, graphic design or photography.

Home PC

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:55:00 +0000

I've been thinking about home PCs lately, with a couple of friends shopping for them and me upgrading mine. These are a different category from the workstations I usually write about - a home PC should be able to run work apps but doesn't do so full time. You'll want something you can use for photography and entertainment, play some games on and occasionally take work home, but you're spending your own money so you want to stay on the shallow side of the price curve and not run up the electric bill. Keeping it quiet is a bonus.

I've been using homemade PCs for about 10 years, upgrading parts as needed to keep the performance reasonably current. The oldest part in my config is the case - by investing in a quality Lian-Li aluminum ATX case 8 years ago I've avoided having to upgrade that part, which is why I always say to buy a better case than you think you need. I upgraded from a run of the mill, cheap ATX case when the old case was running too hot with an Athlon 1700 CPU. It's also best to buy a new model motherboard, as it will probably last two generations of CPUs, allowing one future upgrade without needing to buy a new MB or RAM or reinstall Windows.

So here's a pretty close approximation of my current setup:

Andy's Home PC
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

It falls somewhere between the Budget and Midrange systems in price (I got the newer parts on sale, if you live near a Microcenter you might save some budget if the sale is still on, but the $50 introductory price on Windows 7 upgrades will never come back) but it's not quite as powerful as either - the priorities here are a bit different, as this is meant to take a future CPU upgrade, be overclockable and run... I should say it on this out loud, but it's a slang word that starts with "H" and ends with "intosh". Mine also has more hard drives because it serves video to a set-top multimedia player in the living room.

The i5-760 and the Radeon 5750 are price/performance leaders. Without overclocking, the system gets the following Cinebench scores:

Rendering (single thread): 1.1
Rendering (multi thread): 3.9
OpenGL: 58

When I looked at an online database of Cinebench scores, I was surprised by the systems it beat in OpenGL - clearly the test Cinebench runs uses functions that the Radeon 5xxx series are good at, and I wouldn't expect the same relative results in DirectX. But the card has DX11 hardware, 720 shader threads, flexible outputs (2xDVI, HDMI, Displayport), remarkably low power consumption (16W idle, 86W max) and almost no noise, and the motherboard and CPU also support very low power idling, which is important in a multimedia server that spends a lot of time idling. With the upgraded cooling and Asus motherboard, when I do get around to overclocking it will do quite well - I ran a quick test and got 3.2GHz just by using the BIOS's auto settings in the most conservative mode.

This build will hold its own in 3DSMax but isn't competitive with the Budget or Midrange systems in that area - this has a lot to do with the desktop i5's not supporting Hyperthreading. However, for photography use in Aperture and Photoshop it's a winner. Aperture will make use of the 5750's OpenCL capabilities, and where the i5-760 takes a 20% hit relative to the i7-860 because of the lack of HT, in Photoshop with its lack of efficient multithreading there will be no difference.

August 2010 Mid-month Update: Laptops, GTX 460 2GB!

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:17:00 +0000

I'll admit it, it's been a bit of a snoozer of a summer in hardware updates, with a few small price drops and incremental upgrades. Intel introduced a new 6-core at $900, so if you're willing to pay $900 for your CPU but not $1000, there you go. But I did spot a couple of things recently that piqued my interest, so I'm passing those on.

Video Cards: nVidia GTX 460 in a 2GB version

This is hard to find in stock right now, but given that the GTX 460 is a solid performer, in the middle of the higher-end pack on power consumption and reasonably priced at $200-230 for 768MB and 1GB versions, a couple of companies (Palit and Gainward) announcing 2GB versions of this card gives it another potentially useful place in the market. I haven't seen the Gainward available but the Palit version can be found on Amazon.com or Newegg. Going from 768MB to 1GB to 2GB doesn't do anything for you Max viewport performance, but for those who are already using GPU computing with software like Octane Render and Premiere CS5, the extra memory opens up a bottleneck, allowing larger data sets to be loaded directly onto the card.

Anybody considering a GTX 480, which buys more power but with less memory at twice the cost, should consider using two of these as an alternative. With the latest beta of Octane able to fully utilize the 460, and nVidia's recent driver updates, that's a heck of a lot of power for the money.

Laptops: More than one person has recently asked me to help find them a small laptop. My default response is the 13" Macbook Pro, but for the Windows users it's not quite the most practical solution. The problem is that most of the compact or affordable Windows hardware has some tragic corner cut that makes it less useful for 3D work. (Hey, computer company execs - if you're reading this, contact me and I'll help!) With that caveat, here are a couple of compelling options. Apologies in advance for any cheesy quotes; they're just coming so easily now that the weather's cooled off.

-Toshiba Portege R700 series, 13". This comes in fast, faster and fastest. The high end is an i7 with an SSD, but even the lowest end is a dual core i3. It weighs only 3.2 pounds despite having great battery life and a built in DVD drive, the magnesium case will make you look like a CEO and it comes with the professional edition of Windows 7. The downside is, the GPU is an Intel. This is great for MS Office, Photoshop/Lightroom/Creative Suite - anything where you don't need 3D display power.

-Asus U33JC, 13". Not quite out yet, but if in doubt, wait for it. This slick laptop comes in dark stained bamboo veneer finish. (Forget the environmental arguments - the bamboo is too thin to make a dent in this machine's invested energy, but it looks fresh to death! Yes, this computer is so slick it made me quote Psych. Special promotion: the first reader to buy one from the above link and send me a message on CGArchitect wins the nickname Ovaltine Jenkins!) Pair it with these headphones and you'll be the envy of the local Starbucks. You get a 2.4GHz dual-core i3 with HT, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive and a Geforce 310M - not the fastest GPU on the market, but it has Optimus for GPU switching like the Mac uses. Runs 64-bit Windows 7. Reviewers report a very respectable 4 hours battery life when playing video.

The Asus bamboo series is also available in 14" and 15" models, but the specs are mostly the same (larger models add a DVD drive and an i5 instead of an i3) and the 13", 14" and 15" screens are all 1366x768 - for comparison, my 15" Mac is 1680x1050 - so the 13" seems to be the sweet spot. [edit] However, as the 13" is not yet available and this 14" model is slightly more powerful and has a $150 promotion right now, that's a good one to consider.

-One more small/medium sized laptop I like, a lot: the 14" Acer AS4820TG-5637. You get a 1366x768 display, which is spreading the pixels a bit thinner than I like on a 14", but it comes with a 2.26GHz Core i3 dual core and a Radeon Mobility 5650 with 512mb dedicated - that's a lot of power, and with its 4GB RAM and 64-bit Windows you can run AutoCAD, Revit, Max, CS5 and most other software. It does all that in 4.7 pounds, with no battery bulge, the dark brushed aluminum aesthetics are SFW (safe for work) and the going price is only $800.

If medium size isn't your thing - you want to go all out on either portability or power - here are some ideas:

-Portability: There's a nice crop of 11.6" notebooks developing. A bit bigger than a netbook, but not by much, and with a lot more power. I've been using an Acer 1410, which is no longer in production, but its successor is worthy: the Aspire AS1551 is a dual core with a low-end Radeon, 320GB hard drive, 4GB RAM and 64-bit Windows 7 (yes, 64-bit is standard now, even in miniscule notebooks).

-Almost as much portability: I've always found Alienware a bit too cheesy, with the bright lights and the alien head logo; The X-Files is over, guys. But the truth is still out there, the 11.6" Alienware M11x is like that tiny ray gun from Men In Black. Available in Core i7 with Geforce 335M with Optimus. Unfortunately, the red glowing bits and the rest of the visual styling are not optional - unlike the Toshiba, Asus and Acer portables, I can't seriously see taking this to a client meeting.

-If size is no issue, workstation experts Boxx have laptop for you. These beasts set the standard for mobile pixel-crunching: equivalent power to a good desktop and slightly more portable. If size is only sort of an issue but budget is tight, there's the Toshiba X505. This is one of a class of high-end laptops (MSI, Acer, etc. all have options in this class, but the Toshiba has the best specs per price as I write this) with enough power to run games or 3D apps, at a reasonable price. See also: Sony VPCF123FX. A bit less power and a smaller screen, but it weights 3.3 pounds less, plays Blu-Ray and has a more conventional styling.

August 2010 Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:21:00 +0000

Let me start with apologies for being late with this month's update. It being summer, I spent most of last month in places like this:

and even I can not think about hardware at times like that - though when I got back, and my Macbook Pro running OpenCL accelerated Aperture 3 tore through processing 18 gigs of camera raw files I reflected on how helpful a good GPU computing implementation can be. So after some catch-up, we bring you the commentary section:

What's New In Hardware

Displays now get their own section. Scroll to the bottom.

More movement from nVidia: nVidia did two interesting things in July. They (finally) announced (available this fall) Fermi-based Quadro cards. The only surprise here is how far behind nVidia is right now. ATI refreshed the FirePro line in April with 40nm, DirectX 11 GPUs, and it looks like they're 6 months ahead of nVidia.

But the nVidia line will be impressive, with up to 6GB of memory per GPU to handle complex GPU computing tasks. This also gives nVidia an opportunity to finally put some space between the consumer and workstation lines: before GPU computing, a video card with that much memory would have made no sense, but now they can point to that as a feature. Let's just hope the market for GPU computing software catches up with the hardware, or we'll be stuck with thousands of dollars worth of hardware and nothing to run on it. And since these Quadros are still not out, and most of us don't have any software for them yet, my high end recommendations still come from the ATI FirePro line.

nVidia also (finally) shipped a reasonably priced Fermi-based video card, the Geforce GTX 460. Unlike the Geforce GTX 480, 470 and 465, which are all based on the same GF100 GPU (the lower models have some of their processing units turned off - it's actually cheaper for nVidia to make only GTX 480 GPUs and cripple some of them than to make three different chips) the 460 has a new chip, the GF104.

To put it briefly, the GF104 has fewer processing units than the higher end Fermi GPUs, but they're arranged in an efficient way that lets them be accessed quickly and improves gaming performance, making the 460 faster than the 465 in some game situations. Nobody seems to be able to do GPU computing benchmarks yet, but I wouldn't expect the same to be true in OpenCL/CUDA work, where the GF100's superior processors should be the controlling factor.

The 460 is the first Fermi card I'd consider reasonable, coming in at about $200 for a 768MB version and a bit more for a 1GB, plus a premium for factory-overclocked versions. The 465 was too pricey at release, being $60-80 more than the Radeon 5830, which delivers the same performance with lower power consumption. The 460, with power consumption similar to ATI products in the same range (and a 50W lower power spec than the 465) also brings nVidia's power consumption back into the real world.

Of course, none of this changes my position that the market will be better off when OpenCL emerges as the preferred GPU computing platform, over CUDA. It's nothing against nVidia and their products. OpenCL is an open standard, meaning that any hardware manufacture can make hardware that runs it. CUDA is proprietary, it can only run on nVidia hardware. Open standards and multiple vendor choices encourage competition that is an essential innovation driver in the very fast moving computer industry. Would AMD and Intel CPUs, or Microsoft and Apple operating systems, be as good as they are without the competition? Would GPU computing be better off if it only ran on one company's hardware? (If rumors are to be believed, even Intel is getting interested in this market, and may start offering serious, OpenCL supporting GPUs in a year or two.)

CPUs: Still nothing interesting. Sure, Intel recently released the Core i7-970. That's a 6-core, 3.2GHz chip for $900 retail. 130MHz slower than a 980X, for 10% less money! Are you excited yet? Me neither. What Intel needs is something with 6 cores that competes with the AMD 1090T, and even Wikipedia doesn't know when that's going to happen.

I was almost able to get enthusiastic about the i5-655K as an option for a specialized budget Photoshop machine, with its two cores, 3.2GHz and unlocked multiplier, but with weak turbo numbers and the same price tag as the superior, quad core i5-760, it falls flatter than a new Bon Jovi single.

Still, what we've got leaves us some options to get creative, and from chatter in a couple of web forums I'm seeing a need for recommendations specific to photographers and Photoshoppers, and I'll take a stab at addressing that need this month. Which brings us to...

The Workstations!

For an explanation of the methodology behind these configurations, please refer to the Workstations Introduction page. For an overview of a workstation’s parts, please refer to the Workstation Parts page.

For the readers' convenience, I am providing links to the parts lists I made on Newegg in the course of planning this article. If the Newegg lists differ from the tables shown here, it's because I noticed that a part was out of stock or discontinued, and made a change. You'd be amazed at how quickly computer parts turn over.

Any questions, don't hesitate to ask in the comments section or on the Hardware board at CGArchitect. We keep an eye on both.

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Intern gets a video card upgrade, and now all of the recommended systems use current generation cards. The 5550 is actually not ATI's least expensive 40nm, DirectX 11 GPU, but the 5450 is too low end, even for the Intern. The Athlon II 440 has been replaced in AMD's line with the slightly faster and slightly more expensive 445, but we're talking about 100MHz here - buy the 440 while it's still available. If for whatever reason you want nVidia, look at the GT 220. The AMD CPU beats the Intels at this price, the motherboard is good but a money saver and the case with included power supply provides good value. This is the entry level AutoCAD, Microsoft Office and light Photoshop system, and at under $600 it's the lowest I'd go in an office setting.

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

I'm about to get wordy here. Please bear with me, this is an important point to understand when shopping for a machine at this level:

Here is where we need to start making a distinction between CPUs for rendering, and CPUs for other uses. Current render engines are very efficient multitaskers - they're able to use all of your CPU's GHz, regardless of how many cores those GHz are spread across. Most other software is not this efficient, but most other software - web browsers, Microsoft Office, the usual stuff - doesn't require even the Budget level of performance, and is perfectly happy on the Intern box or on my netbook. (Granted, it's a very nice netbook, but still...) The primary exceptions are the sorts of apps a photographer or graphic designer might use. Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator can weigh down a single core, and there are occasions when they utilize a few cores, but to put a 6-core CPU in a Photoshop box when a 4-core costing less money will outperform it would be unwise.

So, the first of the two Budget-level machines is the machine for those who will hit the Render button.

The AMD 1055T remains the price/performance winner at $200. At only $884, this system represents the best value in entry level machines for rendering. This month we hold at under $900 with few changes - there's no movement in hardware at these price points, and no need to mess with what works. I've been including these cheap keyboards and mice with the less expensive systems, and while I'd give them to an intern I wouldn't use them myself. Everybody's got different hands, keyboards and mice are simple devices that don't require much support, and the smart IT guy will let the users choose their own keyboards and mice.

The Budget (Photoshop Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

First, let me say that I haven't been completely honest with you. This isn't really a Budget level system, based on my budget guidelines - it falls between the Budget and the Midrange. But a Photoshop user's requirements are different, and more must be spent on memory and hard drive to make this box fit the Budget system's goal of being the value system I can recommend for a pro in the appropriate field.

The photographer, the graphic designer and the photoshopper have different requirements from the renderer. This work involves lots of loading and saving of many large files, and CPU intensive operation that do not make efficient use of many threads. You need more power in fewer cores, a lot of memory and a very good hard drive. What you don't need is an overpowered video card - the only app you might care about that actually uses the video card is Aperture, and that won't run on this anyway because it's a Mac exclusive - so this system includes a passively cooled version of my favorite value option, the Radeon 5570, which is completely silent and contributes almost nothing to your electric bill.

The two RE3 (Raid Edition) hard drives have improved life expectancy over normal hard drives, necessary for reliable use in a RAID 0, which is the goal here. Use RAID to improve read speed on those large PSD files. Even with the RE3 drive, I would be remiss not to say that you really do need an external backup system. In an office environment, this can be as simple as a nightly backup of project files to the server.

The i7-870 has fallen to the same price as the 860, my previous recommendation for Photoshop use, but if you're feeling adventurous you can gain even more performance by choosing the i7-875K, DDR3-2000 memory instead of DDR3-1600, and through a combination of increasing the memory speed and dropping the multiplier in the BIOS (possible on a K series CPU), overclock the RAM instead of the CPU. This is an advanced technique.

Whatever else you do, an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 is indispensable, and a Wacom Intuos4 Tablet is a very good idea. Consider an IPS display from the Displays section below.

[Note: there is a typo in that table! The RAM line should read "DDR3 1600 4x2GB $184" as this config has 8GB of RAM. The table graphic will be fixed when I'm at my usual PC.]

The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange features AMD's higher end 3.2GHz six-core CPU. Hardware tweakers will love this CPU, which has the same unlocked multiplier feature as the i7-875K. Last month, this config included a 2GB version of the Radeon 5850, which is excellent for OpenCL use. This month, the 2GB version has gone out of stock pretty much everywhere, and in light of Jeff Mottle's recent report on "pro" and "gamer" video cards and the positioning of ATI's 8-series FirePro cards, this month's Midrange is going in the workstation-class direction with the FireGL v5800.

Strictly speaking, the GPU in the v5800 is less powerful than the Radeon 5850, and while most pro 3D users will find the tradeoff reasonable, some - particularly home users who will also use their workstation for gaming - will not. If you don't want to go in the FirePro direction, you have some very strong options in this price class. You might still find a 2GB Radeon 5850 in stock on Amazon.com, or the 1GB version, which is just as powerful as a 3D accelerator. If you have software that uses CUDA, this Geforce GTX 470 is in budget, and though I don't find it very practical, it certainly is powerful.

Use the Caviar Black hard drive as your C drive and the Green drive for archiving and extra storage, and make sure you're letting that Lian-Li case cool the drives by leaving air space above and below them - the Caviar Black runs warmer than any of the other drives listed on this page. Use one of the incremental backup or file sync programs to keep copies of your project files on both drives for another layer of safety.

The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

There are now four six-core desktop class CPUs, and the Intel i7-980X is still the fastest, and the most expensive. The i7-970 is out, it's almost as fast, and $100 cheaper - so choose it instead of the 980X if you want to save a bit and won't be doing any hardware tweaking. The 980X has the unlocked multiplier, and its extra 133MHz represents 4% more power than the 970, at 3% more total system cost - I'm splitting hairs here, but it's a good value.

What I said about the Midrange video card is true for the High-End as well - in this market, the workstation class part makes sense. The FirePro v7800, a FireGL'ed version of the Radeon 5850 with 2GB onboard, is the obvious choice for this price point, but you wouldn't be going wrong with a FirePro V5800, a Radeon 5870 2GB (six monitors, 1600 OpenCL threads - bonus points to anybody who finds a use for that) or even a Geforce GTX 480.

Install your OS and software on the SSD and use the 1TB drive for your working files. For a bit more speed, order two of the 1TB drives and put them in a RAID 0.

The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

A 24-core box is compelling, but don't try it for your workstation. With their relatively low per-core performance, these Opterons are just not a good choice for your daily uses. But the same motherboard and CPUs used in a render node configuration deliver price/performance you just can't argue with. Build this box to sit next to your primary workstation, and send render tasks to it using the tool of your choice.

This is a significant step up in render speed over what the High End has onboard and not far behind the Maxer, while costing $1500 less than a similar configuration would if done with dual Xeon X5680's. That's a good value.

This render node should not be confused with a render farm. A farm is a collection of machines meant for rendering with, it's a must for complex animations and it should be done as a unit, based on racks, blades or other compact solutions and made for you by a company like Boxx. Get this if you want to add one or two render boxes, making individual nodes more practical than a farm.

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

When I brought down the cost of the high end system by making it single CPU, some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed. It seems I'd been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. So this is the configuration for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer.

No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.

Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs. The FirePro v8800 is a new addition - a "pro" version of the Radeon 5870, the fastest single GPU available (with 1600 stream processes and 2GB memory) and the 24GB of RAM in twelve slots will ensure that you're never held back by lack of memory. For an added bonus, put the two SSD's and the two hard drives in two RAIDs.

Oh, one more thing. These Xeons use triple-channel memory and each CPU has its own memory controller. When using two of these CPUs, there are six memory channels, so the RAM used must be matched DIMMs in multiples of six. This configuration uses a set of 12 DIMMs.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

Displays

A while back, one of my friends sent me a link to this article debunking pretty much every metric and slogan used in HDTV marketing. The market for LCD monitors is no less confusing, so concentrate on three things:

-Screen size.

-Resolution. This is not the problem it is in laptops, but what would you rather have - a 22" screen that's 1680x1050, or a 21.5" screen that's 1920x1080?

-IPS/PVA or TN. What you want here is an IPS or PVA panel, not a TN panel. Inexpensive monitors are TN panels, which have much worse color gamuts and viewing angles than better screens. A consumer LCD monitor likely isn't even processing and displaying color in 8 bits per channel, and if you move your desk chair 6 inches to the side the levels change.

So, here are a few options, all good quality IPS displays usable for professional graphics work:

-Eizo 24" CG243W. Let's get this out of the way first. This is a very expensive monitor with freakin' fantastic color quality. This monitor is appropriate for use in high end video, photography and publishing production environments. It is not necessary for most visualization are graphics work, but if you want the best that's available to you without costing more than your car, this is it. Pairs well with The Maxer.

-HP 22" ZR22W. This takes the spot that the Dell 2209WA used to occupy in my recommendations: a budget friendly model that beats a TN display and pairs well with the Intern and Budget systems. However, the newer HP model is a better panel, has a higher resolution and costs less. It's a winner at the lower end.

-HP 24" ZR24W and HP 30" ZR30W. As the names suggest, these are larger models from the same line as the ZR22W. All are great value options and significant steps up from consumer grade displays. You can size you ZR to your budget.

-Dell 27" U2711. With improved color reproduction and a resolution usually found in 30" displays, this Dell is a step up from the entry level IPS displays but more reasonable than the Eizo. Best with the High End or the Maxer.

-NEC 30" 3090WQXi. NEC's answer to the 30" Apple monitor. H-IPS panel for high end color and good viewing angles. A step up from the 30" HP, and a step up in price.

As usual, whatever you choose, calibrate it! We're not talking about one of those software functions where you look at the gray square and try to make it the same value as the lines, we're talking about a dedicated hardware calibration device. I use the Eye-One Display 2, but some users prefer the Color Munki, which can also be used with printers and projectors. I can't stress the importance of this enough - without calibration, you'll never be able to match your prints to your screen, whether you're using your system for 3D rendering, graphic design or photography.

July 2010 Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:53:00 +0000

CPUs

Another month, another round of updates. On the CPU end, the selection of desktop-class 6-core CPUs holds firm at three: the Intel i7-980X at $1,000 and the AMD Phenom II 1055T and 1090T at $200 and $300. AMD's slipped a slightly slower 12-core 6268 in under the 6172 and Intel's Xeons remain mostly unchanged.

So where are the updates? This is the month of the budget CPU. Prices have fallen at the low end and the Intern gets an upgrade, and Intel has introduced two interesting unlocked multiplier CPUs.

A bit of explanation on that. The multiplier is the ratio of the CPU speed to the memory base speed. For example, a Core i7-870 has a multiplier of 22x, and expects the memory to be at 133MHz, for a CPU speed of 2930MHz. An overclocker can control the CPU speed indirectly by changing the memory speed - increase the memory to 150MHz and the CPU goes up to 3300MHz.

An unlocked CPU, used with an appropriate motherboard, allows the user to change that multiplier. Several AMD CPUs, including the 1090T, are unlocked - these are generally recognizable by the words "Black Edition" in the model name. In the past, Intel's unlocked chips were limited to the very expensive Extreme Edition line, but lately they've added a "K" line of unlocked but affordable CPUs. The real winner here is the i7-875K, which has identical stats to the 870 above but with an unlocked multiplier and a lower price tag.

The unlocked multiplier allows the CPU and memory to be clocked independently. It is possible to hit 3466MHz by leaving the memory at 133MHz and increasing the multiplier to 26x. Or, in some applications, speed can be gained by increasing the memory clock to, say, 175MHz and dropping the multiplier to 17x - a negligible change to the CPU speed.

Of course, here at 3DATSTech we're focusing on computers for an office environment, where overclocking is likely inappropriate - but if you were to overclock, the $300 AMD 1090T or the $330 i7-875K would be excellent choices. Both of these CPUs come with the added advantage of unusually high Turbo Boost numbers, allowing for better performance in single threaded operations including many Photoshop functions and 3DSMax viewport functions and animation calculations.

Video Cards

(See my comments on video card power consumption in last month's workstations and commentary posts. Still applicable. The new GeForces maintain the ability to melt polar ice caps.)

In video cards, ATi and nVidia continue to fill out their lines of new generation cards. The nVidia GTX 465 is a welcome under-$300 addition, but at the same price point as the better performing and lower power ATi 5850 it should only be considered by those who require CUDA support - for example, Arion or heavy Premiere CS5 users. (Of course, anybody with serious CUDA needs should bite the bullet and step up to the GTX 470 or 480.)

ATi has recently updated the FirePro (formerly FireGL) line, and the surprisingly reasonable v4800 and v5800 are now commonly available. These are Radeon cards with added features for pro 3D users - the v4800 is a modified Radeon 5670, and the v5800 is a modified Radeon 5770. As such they share those Radeon cards' exceptional power saving characteristics. Regular readers already know how impressed I've been with the Radeon 5000-series.

The FirePro v4800 comes in at $175, compared to $110 for a comparable Radeon 5670, and the FirePro v5800 is $438, versus $170 for a similar Radeon 5770. Your money goes farther in a Radeon or Geforce card, but if you need a "pro" card these are good values. nVidia's aging Quadro FX 580 and 1800 are modified Geforce 9600 series GPUs and aren't competitive at this price point.

At the high end, the 2GB FirePro v7800 and v8800, also introduced this year, are the pro versions of the Radeon 5850 and 5870, and they're very fast. With the v8800 the line maxes out at 1600 OpenCL threads. (!) With this line, a pro card can be used in anything from a Budget system to a Maxer, and they'll be making an appearance in this month's workstations.

nVidia hasn't Quadro'ed the Geforce 400 series yet - it seems like ATi's beating them to market in every segment these days - but it will be interesting to see what they come up with, when they get around to it.

Hard Drives

The Hitachi E7K series has been out of stock for a while. Hopefully they've got something in the pipeline for us, but for now we'll have to make do with other options. I'll continue to recommend the WD Green series for longer term storage, as its low power use translates to less heat and mechanical stress than other options, which are factors that improve longevity.

Monitors

If you don't already have a preference, and you're heavily into graphics, get this: Dell UltraSharp U2410 24" and calibrate it with this: X-Rite Eye-One Display 2. There are cheaper options out there, but there's no better way to get this much real estate with color this good at a reasonable cost.

Now, on to:

The Workstations

For an explanation of the methodology behind these configurations, please refer to the Workstations Introduction page. For an overview of a workstation’s parts, please refer to the Workstation Parts page.

For the readers' convenience, I am providing links to the parts lists I made on Newegg in the course of planning this article. If the Newegg lists differ from the tables shown here, it's because I noticed that a part was out of stock or discontinued, and made a change. You'd be amazed at how quickly computer parts turn over.

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

I love what they're doing with prices these days. Three cores, four gigs and a competent video card, still under $600. I could have gone a bit higher on the video card, and if for whatever reason you want nVidia, look at the GT 220. The AMD CPU beats the Intels at this price, the motherboard is good but a money saver and the case with included power supply provides good value. This is the entry level AutoCAD, Microsoft Office and light Photoshop system.

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The AMD 1055T remains the price/performance winner at $200, being a competent renderer at a price where other CPUs are merely competent Photoshoppers. At only $884, this system represents the best value in entry level machines for rendering. This month we stay under $900 while getting a better case, USB 3.0 support and better peripherals. I've been including these cheap keyboards and mice with the less expensive systems, and while I'd give them to an intern I wouldn't use them myself. Everybody's got different hands, keyboards and mice are simple devices that don't require much support, and the smart IT guy will let the users choose their own keyboards and mice.

Alternates:

If your Budget system is for CAD, Revit or Photoshop but not rendering, you are in the "fewer but faster cores" market. Substitute this CPU.

If you need nVidia, look at the GeForce 250 1GB version. If you need a "pro" video card, the FirePro v4800.

The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange features AMD's higher end 3.2GHz six-core CPU and one of the fastest video cards available, the Radeon 5850. Price drops have allowed me to go to a 2GB version of the 5850 while keeping the same price point as last month. Why 2GB, when you're hard pressed to make Max use 512MB? We're getting to the point where it's reasonable to start spec'ing hardware to use with OpenCL, and the extra video memory will improve performance in, for example, Vray for GPU.

Use the Caviar Black hard drive as your C drive and the Green drive for archiving and extra storage, and make sure you're letting that Lian-Li case cool the drives by leaving air space above and below them - the Caviar Black runs warmer than any of the other drives listed on this page. Use one of the incremental backup or file sync programs to keep copies of your project files on both drives for another layer of safety.

Some alternates: If you want to take advantage of the multiplier unlock to do some heavy overclocking, the 890FX motherboard included is a good choice, though some will say the Asus Crosshair IV is better. DDR3-2000 RAM would help. If you want to make this an OC'ed Intel system, which will perform a bit better in Photoshop and Revit and a bit worse in rendering, substitute that i7-875K CPU mentioned above and the Asus Maximus III Formula motherboard. Either way, you're also going to want an upgraded CPU cooler.

If you need CUDA, the nVidia GeForce GXT 465 or 470, but be warned that if you use one of those and overclock the CPU you'll be running up against the limits of this power supply and you'll need at least a 750W power supply. Look at the Corsair 750TX and the Antec TP-750. If you need a "pro" video card, take a close look at the FirePro v5800.

The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

There are still only three six-core desktop class CPUs, and the Intel i7-980X is still the fastest, and the most expensive, by a respectable margin. The Radeon 5870, with 1600 stream processors, is a beast in Max viewports or OpenCL, and with this 2GB version you won't be lacking for anything. The SSD is a new, faster model, and the hard drive is server grade - best replacement I could come up with for the now very hard to find Hitachi E7K.

Alternates: The 980X is an unlocked CPU; buy faster DDR3-2000 RAM if you're a tweaker. If you really must buy an nVidia card, at this price point you can afford the GTX 480, but don't say I didn't warn you about the power draw. Better still, if you want a "pro" card, a FirePro v7800 or v8800 keeps the OpenCL performance and energy efficiency of the Radeon 5850 and 5870. If you've got some serious OpenCL needs, the most computing power available on one video card is the Radeon 5970 4GB with 3200 stream processors. No, that's not a typo.

(Added bonus: get the "Eyefinity" version of the video card, with six Displayport plugs, and wire it up to six 60" DLP HDTVs in a 3x2 grid. Game on.)

The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This month I've ditched the 24-core workstation. With its relatively low per-core performance, it's just not a good choice in a high end workstation. But the same motherboard and CPUs used in a render node configuration deliver price/performance you just can't argue with. This is a significant step up in render speed over what the High End has onboard and not far behind the Maxer.

This render node should not be confused with a render farm. A farm is a collection of machines meant for rendering with, it's a must for complex animations and it should be done as a unit, based on racks, blades or other compact solutions and made for you by a company like Boxx. Get this if you want to add one or two render boxes, making individual nodes more practical than a farm.

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

When I brought down the cost of the high end system by making it single CPU, some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed. It seems I'd been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. So this is the configuration for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer.

No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.

Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs. The FirePro v8800 is a new addition - a "pro" version of the Radeon 5870, the fastest single GPU available (with 1600 stream processes and 2GB memory) and the 24GB of RAM in twelve slots will ensure that you're never held back by lack of memory. For an added bonus, put the two SSD's in a RAID.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

June 2010 Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Wed, 26 May 2010 19:14:00 +0000

After last month's advances in the hardware market, this month would seem merely incremental were it not for AMD and their new Opterons. These show up in two configurations I haven't done before, a cool sounding but impractical 24-core workstation, and a boring sounding but very practical 24-core render node.

But first, I want to update the readers on a couple of things:

CPUs

AMD's got a new round of Opterons out, and Intel's got nothing exciting going to, so to shake things up a bit I've added a configuration using two twelve-core Opterons. That's 24 cores.

Impressive, yes? Unfortunately in terms of performance it falls below the fastest Intel dual-six-core options, so I've put it in a configuration between the High End and the Maxer. In this configuration it actually represents excellent value in a high end box. Here are some Cinebench multithreaded render numbers, based on an approximate average of data from the web:

High End: 10.2 Cinebench, $3100
24-Core: 14.8 Cinebench, $4500
The Maxer: 17 Cinebench, $7500

So what exactly is a 24-core system useful for? A system with that many cores sacrifices single-threaded (or few-threaded) speed for many-core speed. If what you want is fast rendering in an efficiently multithreaded system such as Vray, mental ray, Cinema4D 11.5, etc., many cores is fantastic. But if your main need is speed in Adobe apps, which don't gain anything by going past 4 to 6 threads even in the new versions, go with the single-CPU High End system. Fewer, but faster, cores will be more useful.

Video Cards

In my earlier article on hardware I gave some numbers for video card power consumption and why the Radeon 5670 and 5850 impress me, and those two cards are included in the recommendations. However, this GPU computing thing is coming to a bit of a head and there's a split in the market between OpenCL and CUDA. I have no doubt that OpenCL will become the dominant option, being an open spec that runs on ATI and nVidia hardware alike, but there are a few apps that are currently stuck in proprietary nVidia-only CUDA land, and these unfortunately include Adobe Premiere CS5, Octane Render and Random Control's Arion.

If you need CUDA, here are some options:

GeForce GT 240 $90
GeForce GTX 465 $280
GeForce GTX 470 $360
Quadro FX 4800 $1700

That Quadro isn't really recommended, unless you have another reason for it like an OpenGL app that needs a workstation class card. The GTX 480 is still not recommended, because it's not that much faster than the 470 while being completely insane. It costs $500 and draws 74 more watts that the GTX 470 and 133 more watts than the 465 under load. For reference, the TDP - the total amount of power consumption possible before meltdown - of a Core i7 980X CPU is 130 watts. The GTX 480 burns 156 watts more than the Radeon 5850.

That's nuts. The difference in performance between a 480 and a 5850 is barely enough to register, but the 480 costs $150 more and burns as much power as all of my light bulbs put together. I have compact fluorescents, but that's still a lot. And that's not all:

The Radeon 5870 is faster than the GTX 480, but the GTX 480 burns 121 more watts than the 5870.

The Radeon 5850 is faster than the GTX 470, but the GTX 470 burns 82 more watts than the 5850.

If you use software that needs CUDA, send the company a note saying you want OpenCL. If enough of us get together on this, we can prevent global warming.

Now, on to...

The Workstations

For an explanation of the methodology behind these configurations, please refer to the Workstations Introduction page. For an overview of a workstation’s parts, please refer to the Workstation Parts page.

For the readers' convenience, I am providing links to the parts lists I made on Newegg in the course of planning this article. If the Newegg lists differ from the tables shown here, it's because I noticed that a part was out of stock or discontinued, and made a change. You'd be amazed at how quickly computer parts turn over.

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Intern system continues its reign of inexpensive value-engineered inexpensiveness, coming in at under $600. The video card has been upgraded - yes, it's possible to get cheaper, but I'm taking pity on the interns here - and the hard drive is a touch faster than the old one. The CPU remains an AMD dual-core, the motherboard is good but a money saver and the case with included power supply provides good value. This is the entry level AutoCAD, Microsoft Office and light Photoshop system.

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

I was very pleased with how last months' Budget system came out, and I'm not messing with what works. Well, not messing a lot. The video card and hard drive are upgraded. The hard drive has a better sustained read/write speed, and the Radeon 5670 is noticeably faster than the 5570 and provides more GPU computing capability. At only $870, this system represents the best value in entry level machines for rendering, with the six-core AMD CPU a significantly better performer than Intel's chips in the same price class.

If your Budget system is for CAD, Revit or Photoshop but not rendering, you are in the "fewer but faster cores" market. Substitute this CPU.

The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange features AMD's higher end 3.2GHz six-core CPU and one of the fastest video cards available, the Radeon 5850. (If you need CUDA, that GeForce GTX 465 is a reasonable alternative.) Use the Caviar Black hard drive as your C drive and the Green drive for archiving and extra storage, and make sure you're letting that Lian-Li case cool the drives by leaving air space above and below them - the Caviar Black runs warmer than any of the other drives listed on this page.

Whether you're modeling, rendering, assembling a skyscraper in Revit, Photoshopping a print-res image or updating your Facebook status, this machine brings the power you need.

Alternative configuration: For Photoshop, Revit and other few-but-faster-cores applications - the fastest option in this class is the Intel Core i7-860, which has higher one- and two-thread Turbo Boosts than the i7-9xx series. Pair that with the ASRock P55 Pro motherboard and use the rest of the current Midrange parts list.

The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Again, not much change. There has been movement in this class. There are still only three six-core desktop class CPUs, and this Intel still commands a $1,000+ price because it is 50% faster than the AMD 1090T, which is still the second fastest desktop class chip. The Radeon 5870 is, depending on what you're doing with it, the fastest or second fastest video card that doesn't cost more than the rest of the computer put together. The SSD is fast, and the 1TB hard drive is an upgrade over last month's, with better sustained read/write and a longer expected lifespan.

The 24 Core
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Here's the 24-core AMD box, as promised. A bit less than 50% more cost for a bit less than 50% more rendering power - at the high end of the price curve, that's actually a very good value. AMD's code name for its new line of many-core Opteron chips is "Magny-Cours", which is French for "a lot of cores". Just kidding. But that's what it sounds like, isn't it? Appropriately, Magny-Cours, in central France, is the location of a famous F1 race circuit.

Choose this system if you want to render at ludicrous speed but can't afford the Maxer. This system is unfortunately not very fast in applications that do not multithread well, so it isn't really that practical as a workstation and most users would actually be better off with the Core i7 High End system. But as a render node, look at what it can do:

The 24 Core Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This box has the same rendering power as the 24-core workstation above, but without some of the bells and whistles of a workstation. At $3800 for 14.8 Cinebench points it represents the best value in render power per budget I've ever seen.

This render node should not be confused with a render farm. A farm is a collection of machines meant for rendering with, it's a must for complex animations and it should be done as a unit, based on racks, blades or other compact solutions and made for you by a company like Boxx.

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

When I brought down the cost of the high end system by making it single CPU, some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed. It seems I'd been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. So this is the configuration for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer.

No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.

Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs. The Quadro FX 4800 will power through... well, anything, really... and the 24GB of RAM in twelve slots will ensure that you're not held back by lack of memory. For an added bonus, put the SSD's in a RAID. If you want maximum CUDA performance and don't need the Quadro features, you're best off with one or more GeForce GTX 4xx series video cards.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

Hard drives and monitors

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:40:00 +0000

A comment on an earlier article about hard drives, and my own need for a new boot drive, got me thinking about hard drive speed lately, so I did a bit of research and found three particularly good lines:

-WD Caviar Black: These 7200 RPM drives offer the fastest access time (time to skip between files) but run the hottest and cost a bit more than others. They need to be mounted in the computer with space above and below for air flow, and preferably in a case with a fan that blows air past the hard drives. (That's actually a good idea for any drive, as overheating is one of the main causes of hard drive failure, but with these it's more important.)

-WD Caviar Green: This is a slower hard drive that runs cooler and uses less power. Best for archival use and any time you don't absolutely need the speed, as the less aggressive hardware is likely to last longer.

-Hitachi drives that are 7200 RPM with 32MB cache: Hitachi doesn't have as convenient a naming scheme as WD, but these drives have the fastest sustained read/write speeds, which is desirable for use with large files such as high res images and video. For a premium price, the "E" series claims a very long life span.

SSD drives are, of course, faster than these magnetic technology drives, but they can't match them on price and capacity.

I bought a Hitachi drive and already had a Caviar Black, so I ran a few tests and can confirm that the Caviar Black has the faster access time and the Hitachi has the faster sustained read and write.

There are a lot of questions about monitors, and the advice is usually to go with an IPS or (now less common) PVA type display as they have superior color reproduction to the less expensive TN panels. But it can be difficult to find, from the manufacturer's literature, exactly which monitors use which technology.

This page is a good list of IPS monitors on the market. Whatever you choose, I recommend calibrating the display for best matching of monitor to print. The i1 Display 2 is a good choice if you want to calibrate the monitor and then print using profiles supplied by the printer or paper manufacturer. The Color Munki is a more complete solution that can also be used on printers and projectors.

The 3DATS Advanced to Expert book has a very good chapter on color management by CGArchitect's Jeff Mottle.

Thoughts on Hardware

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Tue, 25 May 2010 18:28:00 +0000

Instead of trying to get everything into the workstations post this month, I thought I'd go for a change of pace and post two articles: one ruminating on things I find interesting about hardware, followed by another on workstation configurations.

Last week, I found myself in an unusual predicament: I didn't have enough hardware. See, I'm going back to school in the fall and I'd been looking for an opportunity to offload my four-year-old 17" Macbook Pro for a newer, smaller model with a better battery, and I found a buyer at $750. (Yes, that's a fair price - Macs do retain value, even over four years.) Normally my laptop and desktop back each other up so that if one breaks down and I have to, say, do a bunch of Photoshop work, it's not a problem. Of course, as soon as I'd traded the laptop for the wad of cash, I got home and heard a "clunk-whirrrrrrr" as the boot drive on the desktop failed.

Between doing post on print res images in Photoshop Elements on my netbook (seriously, not recommended) and surgery on my desktop, two things occurred to me:

1. RAID-0 is a terrible idea. Sure, it made my boot drive faster, but at what cost? Now I bet somebody's going to correct me on my math, but if I remember correctly, a two drive array (where if either one fails, you're toast) the expected average lifetime of the array is (1-1/(SQRT 2) = 30% less than the expected average lifetime of a single drive. Had I been using one drive instead of two, the chance of it failing on that particular day would have been halved.

2. It's pretty cool that my antique FireGL V5200 is powered off the PCIE bus and does not require an additional power connection. Video cards can use a lot of power. Can this be quantified, so that we can factor GPU power consumption into operating costs? I alluded to this last month, and now that I look it seems like the folks at Tom's Hardware are thinking along the same lines. They've started adding watts under load to their video card benchmark charts.

I did some looking around and found that the Radeon 5570, last month's Budget system video card, also does not require a supplemental power connection. Neither does the Radeon 5670, which is the same card but with the GPU clocked somewhat faster and a faster type of memory.

From browsing Tom's Hardware (shameless, I know - I just don't have the ability to run tests on a few dozen video cards and measure power consumption) and making a few inferences, we should be able to figure out how much any given video card costs, per year, in electricity.

Let's assume a few things: you're using the video card for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks year. Half that time the GPU is under load (you're doing some activity in 3D) and the other half it's not. Those numbers aren't accurate for everybody, but they mean 1,000 hours per year loaded and 1,000 idle. It's like when you assume a cow is spherical in physics class. Also, assume you're paying the US average for electricity, which is $0.12 per kilowatt-hour, but your power supply is average and is 80% efficient, which means your computer actually consumes 25% more power than its components use. That would be an extra step and I'm only concerned with cost, so I'll just correct for it by making the cost of electricity $0.15 per kWH.

If you turn your computer off when you leave the office:

If you leave your computer on, 24/7:

These numbers are based on one test each under certain circumstances with certain versions of those cards. Your mileage may vary. If you pay a lot more than $0.12 per kWH (e.g., you live in Hawaii) or less (you live in Nebraska), these numbers would be different. But the moral of the story is, if you have a 4870 or a high end GeForce, turn the computer off when you leave the office, and if you want to leave the computer on, get something low on that list. The Radeon 5670 is particularly appealing, using so little electricity while being more powerful than the very popular GeForce 9800GT. So is the Radeon 5850, for being the fastest card in that list while using below average power.

The GeForce GT 240 has good power numbers, but its performance numbers trail the 5670 and it doesn't save you enough money to be worthwhile.

Notably absent are the new GeForce GTX 470 and GeForce GTX 480. I found another page that compares them to a few other cards. The 480 uses slightly less power than the 295, and the 470 uses slightly less than the 285.

In other news:

-Finally, a reason to buy a GPU for CUDA. For those who haven't been following, CUDA is a proprietary nVidia technology for running software functions on the GPU. OpenCL does the same thing, but it's better because it's an open spec and can be used with the superior ATI hardware as well as nVidia GPUs.

Adobe Premiere CS5 makes heavy use of a new technology they're calling Mercury for GPU-accelerated playback, and so far it's CUDA-only. They claim the SDK for doing the same on ATI hardware wasn't good enough for them, but Chaos Group has VRay RT running on OpenCL so I'm suspicious of that statement. But apparently nVidia's got some fanboys, and apparently they're just giddy over this one.

-Speaking of fanboys: Was Steve Jobs right? His open letter on Flash set off a lot of arguments, but one thing in particular hit me: his comment that Flash on mobile devices would hurt battery life. I had noticed earlier that my web browser CPU usage, which usually spikes when loading a web page then goes to near zero, stays high when the page has a Flash ad.

I found an article by consulting firm SecTheory where they had done a battery of browser tests and noticed the same problem, so they ran power usage tests with Flash ads turned on, and again with software that blocks ads and Ajax, and found that not only were the ads annoying, they increased the computer's power consumption by 11 watts!

Now that I've run the GPU power numbers, I know that at 40 hours a week that translates to $3.30 per year. I can't say, precisely, how much Flash would decrease battery life on my iPhone, but I'm glad it's not a problem. Thank you, Steve. (I'm so going to get flamed in the comments, aren't I? Oh well, we've got comment moderation turned on.)

-nVidia has announced a GeForce 480 mobile for laptops. Wonder what that's going to do to battery life. Don't run Flash on it.

-AMD continues to bring 6-core CPUs to the budget market with the 1035T CPU. This is apparently only available in certain OEM PCs so far, but presumably it's coming to retail soon and at a price point below the 1055T's $200. It's a 2.6GHz CPU. They've also quietly updated the 1055T to a new part number spec'ed at 30 watts fewer than the original.

-Nothing interesting from Intel in the last month. Their next desktop class 6-core is the i7-970, 3.2GHz, scheduled for Q3 2010 at $562. Until then, there's nothing between the AMD 1090T and the i7-980X, but before the 970 release they have an i7-880 scheduled to replace the 870 at the same price point. Don't get too excited - it's only 133MHz faster, and its turbo numbers for 3 and 4 threads are lower, so it won't render any faster. But it will be... let's see here... 3% faster in Photoshop! Yeah, there's no way to spin that as interesting.

-Edit: One more thing I meant to say:

Another app I've recently learned is GPU accelerated is Apple Aperture. In version 3, they added OpenCL support through Apple's "Grand Central" system, but didn't advertise this! It was discovered by users who got tipped off by the last version Macbook Pro's user-switchable video card. After noticing that the program seemed inexplicably slower when the nVidia 9400 card was turned out, they did some tests and found that common tasks like importing raw files and generating previews were 3x faster with the 9600 card turned on. This made me pretty happy, as I found this out after ordering the new model with the GT 330 card, and indeed it flies. The technology is also compatible with newer ATI cards.

A Review of the 2600 GoBOXX from BOXX® Technologies - Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith) — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:41:00 +0000

click to enlarge

Background

From March 16-19, 2010, and in cooperation with CGarchitect, I had the pleasure of teaching two 3D courses in London using a mobile workstation from BOXX Technologies. The first 2-day course was Advanced 3ds Max and the second 2-day course was Beginner to Intermediate V-Ray. I was one of five instructors, but the only one lucky enough to be teaching from such a powerful computer.

During the workshop, students were required to bring their own laptops, and the average laptop we usually see in our workshops is a Core2 Duo with 4GB of RAM. Since the trip to London required plane travel, I planned to bring a laptop of my own, like the rest of the instructors. My travel laptop, prior to this event, was also a Core2 Duo machine with 4GB RAM, like most of the students.

Two weeks prior to the workshop, I received a call from Gerrie Schwartz, a Performance Specialist in the Sales Department of BOXX. She asked me the usual questions about whether or not I was happy with our current computers and if I was considering upgrading anytime soon. It was generally the typical sales pitch, but I must admit that she was unusually professional and knowledgeable.

I mentioned our upcoming workshop in London and how nice it would be to try out a BOXX laptop during a live presentation such as this. To my surprise, she indicated that BOXX might be open to a trade of sorts, whereby BOXX would provide their top mobile workstation (free of charge) in exchange for some free advertising with 3DATS. After a few days of negotiating, an agreement was reached which included the requirement that I write this review about my experience with the GoBOXX in London. I made it clear that my review of the machine would not be affected in any way by any agreement in place between us and that I would have no reservations about providing poor rating if the machine were to perform poorly. (I was actually sent an unsolicited 3D related product last year and asked to write a review. After reviewing the product, I informed the manufacturer that the company wouldn’t want my review).

Unfortunately, the London workshop occurred just one month before the introduction of the first six-core mobile workstation, so the machine that I taught with in London was a quad-core machine. I have since returned the quad-core machine and am currently awaiting the arrival of the six-core. Part II of this review will be a review of this six-core machine as it performs during a 1-hour live webinar entitled Advanced VRay, which will be broadcast live from the Chaos Group in Bulgaria on June 8th, 2010 (http://www.thecgschool.com/register/). Part I is strictly a review of the quad-core machine as it performed in London. Because this is a two part review with a faster system reserved for Part II, I will save all benchmark test renders for the faster system to be reviewed later and speak in general terms regarding the speed of the quad-core.

The Specs

The machine I used in London was the 2600 GoBOXX, utilizing a quad core Intel® Core™ i7 series processor running at 3.06 GHz. The machine included 6GB RAM, six USB ports, and boasted a 17” screen with a 1920x1080 high-definition display. The graphics card was an NVIDIA® Quadro® FX2800M with 1GB memory and the hard drive was a 300GB SATA 2.5, 7200 RPM. The machine was full of countless other hardware goodies, but none that played a major role in the overall performance during the live workshop. In terms of software, the machine ran on Windows® 7 64-bit and I used Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2010 and V-Ray® 1.5 with SP4.

First Impressions

The GoBOXX arrived in perfect condition, secured intelligently in a very protective box. My first impression was that it was quite heavy and a bit large; about twice the weight and twice the thickness of the average laptop. Specifications from the BOXX Tech website put the machine at 15.48” w x 11.75” d x 2” h, 11.5 lbs with battery. When I saw four fans on the bottom, my first concern was that the machine would be excessively loud and hot, like a few other cutting-edge laptops I had purchased in the past.

My concerns quickly subsided as I turned the machine on and realized I could barely hear a sound coming from it. After a few hours of installing software, it was clear that the machine made great use of the four fans, as I barely detected any heat, especially where my hands rested on the keyboard while typing. Where my hands rested on the keyboard was a glass or plastic material (can’t tell which), which gave me the impression that I wouldn’t see the same weathered and worn use after years of work like I’ve always seen on other laptops where my hands wear down the material they rest on.

I only noticed two things that I didn’t like about the machine during my first impression. One was the awkwardness of resting my hands on a 2-inch thick keyboard; it required a little adjusting in the way I rested my elbows on my desk. Over the next few hours, this was an unnoticeable difference that I quickly adjusted to. The second was that the power adapter was extremely large (about three times the weight of my typical laptop adapter), and the cord that ran from the machine to the adapter was only about two feet long. This meant that I had to place the adapter on the desk next to the machine, rather than on the floor as I would have greatly preferred.

Performance During the Workshop

Each of the two courses consisted of 18 hours of instruction over 2 days. Most surprisingly, throughout the entire 36 hours of instruction, the GoBOXX didn’t crash a single time and 3ds Max 2010 only crashed once; which was only because I accidentally right-clicked the sliders next to the Max Size value of the Subdivide modifier, something akin to asking 3ds Max to calculate pi to infinity.

One of the first things students tend to ask at the start of a training session is what kind of machine the instructor is using. This class was no exception and the sleek, shiny, and large GoBOXX drew quick attention and a few remarks of envy. Furthermore, during this workshop I experienced an issue I had never dealt with before with any other workshop or training session. When 3DATS performs training in our own facility, all students and instructors use the same type of computer and even when training is conducted on the road, I have always used a laptop similar to those brought by the students. This new machine from BOXX, however, was so much faster than any other student machine, I had to catch myself at times and ensure that I wasn’t getting too far ahead of the students when rendering a scene. I also felt it necessary at times to not make light of the complexity of particularly large scenes that opened so quickly on my machine, knowing that long after I was in and moving about a scene, the students were still waiting for the scene to open on their machines.

When conducting training, time is always short and it’s critical that an instructor not waste time on unnecessary delays. Rendering large and complex scenes is certainly desirable during training, but it’s usually not practical and we’re often forced to either conduct render regions or use simplistic scenes that render quickly. While the hands-on scenes that the students used were still the typically simplistic scenes or render regions of more complex scenes, having the GoBOXX enabled me to demonstrate on some rather nice scenes that I don’t normally have the opportunity to use. When rendering with V-Ray, the students often seemed in awe at 8 buckets rendering at blazing speed.

The only negative comment that I could mention about the machine’s performance during the training was that on two occasions I accidentally put the machine in sleep mode. For reasons that I can’t fathom, the designers decided to put the sleep button between the Mute and Volume down button. When trying to mute the machine, I saw the Volume Down button and naturally pushed the button next to it.

Summary

Overall, I couldn’t have been more impressed with the performance of the GoBOXX during the workshop. The speed of the machine appeared to be about 6 times faster than the typical Dell Core 2 Duo that populates our training facility. The high-definition display was brilliant with deep, rich colors, and the graphics card working behind the scenes made viewport refreshes ridiculously fast (adaptive degradation, therefore, was all but non-existent during the workshop). The machine was as quiet and cool as any laptop I have ever worked with. The machine was large and heavy (especially the power adapter), which made travelling a little less comfortable; however, this was a very minor inconvenience to having a lot of power and screen real estate to work with. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have to rate the GoBOXX a 9.5, because, as noted previously, I could not have been more impressed with its performance. As for the very few negative issues—they were nothing more than a momentary inconvenience.

Coming Soon

Part II of this review will be available in mid-June. That review will detail the performance of BOXX Technologies’ top-of-the-line GoBOXX during the June 8th live webinar on V-Ray for 3ds Max, broadcast from the Chaos Group in Bulgaria.

If you would like to learn more about the machine reviewed here, please visit http://www.boxxtech.com/products/goBOXX/goboxx_overview.asp.

May 2010 Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:40:00 +0000

It's been an interesting month for CPUs. Thanks to AMD, 6-core is going mainstream ahead of Intel's schedule. So quickly, in fact, that I'm including 6-core chips as low as the Budget level! Meanwhile, predictably, Intel has expanded its six-core Xeon line. Last month, my decision to put a single six-core i7 in the High End system - which, I assure you, made perfect sense as an upgrade from two slower 4-core chips - caused a bit of controversy in the CGArchitect forum. At the time, the only 6-core Xeons you could find were the high end chips listed at $2400 and I just couldn't recommend $4800 worth of CPU with a straight face.

As I write this, there are seven six-core CPUs listed on Newegg:

AMD 2.8GHz: $200
AMD 3.2GHz: $300

i7 3.33GHz: $1050

Xeon 2.26GHz: $1050
Xeon 2.66GHz: $1030
Xeon 2.80GHz: $1270
Xeon 2.93GHz: $1460
Xeon 3.33GHz: $1750

Now I have no idea why the slowest Xeon isn't the cheapest, but there are some real values in that list, especially the 2.8GHz AMD and the 2.66GHz Xeon.

In the next few months, AMD is going to push things forward another step or two: a sixteen-core Opteron, that can be used on a four-socket motherboard for a 64-core system! How efficiently would that render? I have no idea.

The video card market also marches forward, but it's more like a stroll than the CPU market's sprint. The new Geforce GTX 470 and 480 are available, and like an ill wind, they blow no minds. Those gamer site Direct3D benchmarks are mixed - sometimes the new cards are faster than the old ones in their price classes, sometimes not.

And at what cost those 5 FPS of frag power? According to Tom's Hardware Guide, a fully loaded GTX 470 uses 88 watts more than a fully loaded Radeon 5850, and the GTX 480 uses 170 watts more than the 5850. 170 watts! Let's put that in context: the 6-core Intel Core i7-980X CPU uses 130 watts. Those new Geforce cards do have some interesting features, but none of the software we're interested in uses them and this site is about computers not space heaters, so my recommendation is to wait for the next version.

Well, enough of that, on to the systems.

For an explanation of the methodology behind these configurations, please refer to the Workstations Introduction page. For an overview of a workstation’s parts, please refer to the Workstation Parts page.

For the readers' convenience, I am providing links to the parts lists I made on Newegg in the course of planning this article. If the Newegg lists differ from the tables shown here, it's because I noticed that a part was out of stock or discontinued, and made a change. You'd be amazed at how quickly computer parts turn over.

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This month’s Intern system moves to AMD, which is now edging out Intel at this price point. The CPU is a 3GHz dual-core (remember when a 3GHz dual-core was really, really fast?) that, like last month's, will provide enough power for your architectural interns’ AutoCAD and Microsoft Office needs at an entry-level price, and for slightly less money than Intel's low end. Will that 0.4GHz improvement make them more productive? Don't be silly. There is no way to make an architectural intern productive.

You can get cheaper than this, but I wouldn't recommend it. I also wouldn't recommend this system if your interns do 3D work. For that you should buy them...

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Now with more render power!

This Budget system is a bit spendier than last month's, but comfortably under the $1000 point. Using the math from my CPUs article (almost finished, really!) I estimate this box is about 35% faster than last month's Core i5 based system for multithreaded rendering. If you're using one of the modern renderers (mental ray, Vray, Fry, Maxwell, recent versions of C4D, etc.) this is a substantial boost. Expect this system to render as quickly as last month's Midrange.

On the other hand, if you value single-threaded performance over multi-threaded - you spend most of your time in Revit or Photoshop, for example - that i5-750 is actually faster, getting a 400MHz kick from its Turbo Boost and an edge from Intel's more efficient microarchitecture. Go back to last month's article and choose that motherboard and CPU.

This month's video card is also a bit of an improvement. The Radeon 4670 is showing its age and its replacement in the market is the 5570. At $75 this is an excellent value option and powerful enough for BIM and 3D use - more powerful than the popular Geforce 9800GT.

I chose the motherboard for its feature set and 6-core compatibility, only later realizing that it has an onboard video card. You could leave this on if you want to run a secondary monitor, but otherwise turn it off to save power. It's not good enough to run 3D apps.

The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Since Intel launched the Core 2, they've led AMD in every market segment except the very low (chips so cheap you wouldn't give them to your intern) and the very high (4- and 8-CPU motherboards). Now here I am recommending AMD for three systems in a row. I'm sure that by the end of the year the Yankees will have lost the division and Intel will have a $300 CPU that beats AMD's, but for now these low-cost AMD 6-core chips own this market segment. With AMD's version of Turbo Boost, the 1090T can hit 3.6GHz in single-threaded apps. In multithreaded rendering, expect about a 10% improvement over the similarly priced i7-930.

I've been accused of overspending on cases, but I'll ust say this: the only part of my own PC that I've had longer than the Lian-Li case is the 3.5" floppy drive. My case has outlasted 4 CPUs and 4 motherbards. It's light, easy to assemble, extremely well made and provides excellent cooling. I'm also including a very good keyboard and mouse, because I think that such a powerful PC should have comparably good peripherals, but these are a matter of personal preference.

Alternative configuration: If you are looking for maximum single-thread performance - you do most of your work in Photoshop, Revit or some other CPU-intensive but not many-threaded app - the fastest option in this class is the Inte Core i7-860, which has higher one- and two-thread Turbo Boosts than thei7-9xx series. Pair that with the ASRock P55 Pro motherboard from last month's configuration and use the rest of the current Midrange parts list, and you have a great Revit or Photoshop system.

The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This system has not changed much from last month. Why mess with a good thing? A few prices have come down and it's getting a video card upgrade. The cost comes in at $3,100, and this is as much 3D workstation power as you can get in that price class. Intel still has the edge over AMD in CPU architecture, and it shows in rendering performance - one of the few applications that can take advantage of the 12 threads the i7-980X provides with Hyperthreading. This system will run renders 50-55% faster than the Midrange system's AMD 1090T CPU, which is the second fastest desktop class chip.

I know some of you guys are overclockers, and this month's Budget, Midrange and High End are all overclockable - but if you're going to try, please make sure you know what you're doing.

The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed that I brought down the cost of the high end system last month. It seems I've been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. I'm introducing this new category this month for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer.

No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.

Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs. The Quadro FX 4800 will power through... well, anything, really... and the 24GB of RAM in twelve slots will ensure that you're not held back by lack of memory. For an added bonus, put the SSD's in a RAID.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

Alternative configuration: If you want 12 cores but can't stomach that price tag, you can knock $3,000 off the price by using Xeon X5650 CPUs, 18GB of RAM instead of 24, one SSD instead of two and the Radeon 5870 from the High End config instead of the Quadro. It would still be a very powerful workstation, but it wouldn't be a Maxer.

April 2010 Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Welcome to the second installment of the 3DATS Workstation Guide. In the last month, a few interesting new pieces of hardware have come out and a lot of prices have changed, but here at 3DATS we stay on top of all of that and bring you freshly updated recommendations.

Our CGArchitect readers will remember that I've been collecting a lot of benchmark data lately. I have an Excel sheet that lets me draw the infamous price/performance curve and answer questions like "what's better, Intel or AMD?" but the article isn't quite done so for now let it suffice to say that this month, for these types of configurations, Intel is better; and that these CPUs are all chosen for their positions on the curve.

For an explanation of the methodology behind these configurations, please refer to the Workstations Introduction page. For an overview of a workstation’s parts, please refer to the Workstation Parts page.

For the readers' convenience, I am providing links to the parts lists I made on Newegg in the course of planning this article. If the Newegg lists differ from the tables shown here, it's because I noticed that a part was out of stock or discontinued, and made a change. You'd be amazed at how quickly computer parts turn over.

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This month’s Intern system is an update to last month's, to reflect a few changes in the market. The CPU is a bit faster, still a dual-core that will provide enough power for your architectural interns’ AutoCAD and Microsoft Office needs at an entry-level price.

We’ve saved money by using a CPU, motherboard and RAM that are a previous generation of technology and a case and power supply sold together, and a video card that's got enough power for basic work but not enough for full-time 3D work. You can go cheaper, but I wouldn't recommend it.

(Pre-Built Option: If you don’t want to build your own PC, use the HP.com web site to custom configure an HP Compaq 6000 Pro Microtower PC with the same stats given here, but with a Radeon 4650 video card. It will cost twice as much but will include a 3-year warranty.)

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

For the Budget system we step up to a newer generation entry level CPU, the quad-core Intel Core i5. This is the entry-level system for 3D visualization users. It's also had a few updates since last month, and the video card has been upgraded, but there hasn't been much movement in CPUs and motherboards at this level so those parts remain the same.

(Pre-Built Option: Again, a custom HP Compaq 6000 Pro Microtower PC can be substituted. Use a Core 2 Quad Q9400 CPU, 4GB RAM and a Radeon 46xx video card. Again, it will cost nearly twice as much but will include a 3-year warranty, and of course you won’t have to build it yourself.)

The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange system system steps up to the quad-core Core i7 CPU. In March, I had occasion to do quite a bit of benchmarking and was impressed with the performance of the newer i7's on the 1156 motherboards, and I've saved you a bit of money by going in that direction. This system is more powerful all around than the Budget, and a bit better than the March Midrange.

The Lian Li aluminum case is light, easy to assemble and provides excellent cooling, and the Neo Eco power supply is efficient and powerful enough to drive these upgraded components.

(Pre-Built Option: Unfortunately this machine falls into a class that PC vendors don’t like to provide. If you were a salesman, a gamer or a senior animator at Pixar they’d know what to sell you, but you’re not and they don’t. The closest match would have to be an HP Z400 workstation, with a single Xeon W3520 CPU and a FireGL V5700 video card, or a Boxxtech 4850, but the prices are higher than they would be if the non-”workstation” business desktop systems had more options.)

The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This is the configuration that's changed the most from last month. What's happened in the last month in high-end computing? Intel has released their first 6-core i7, the 980X, and that's what's in this configuration. This is a 3.33GHz chip, so its 6 cores together are faster than the 8 cores of the March high end. Because it runs on a single-socket motherboard, even though this one CPU is more expensive than last month's two CPUs, budget is saved on the motherboard and RAM and it almost works out.

If I were to write up a "very high end" it would involve two 3.33GHz quad-core Xeons and it would be much more expensive.

Because Autodesk just shipped the new version of Max, with the Quicksilver renderer, I've included the nVidia GTX 285 video card, which should run Quicksilver admirably - though this is with the caveat that don't have benchmarking in Quicksilver yet, so I'm making an educated guess based on the GPU's speed. nVidia just announced the GTX 470 and 480, and I got to try the 3-screen, 3D-glasses-enabled demo at Pax East, but the nVidia rep told me that the 3D glasses tech doesn't work with apps - just games - and the cost and power/cooling requirements put the 4xx series in "still just for hard core gamers" territory. After we get some test results and nVidia has some time to work out any driver bugs, the 470 might replace the 285 at the $350 price point. ATi loyalists and anybody running a version of Revit that does not run Direct3D should spend a bit more and get a Radeon 5870.

Install Windows and software on the SSD drive, and use the 1TB drive for your data files, and you'll be reenacting that Maxell audio tape "Blown Away" ad in no time.

(Pre-Built Option: The market for 6-core machines hasn't developed yet, go with a dual-Xeon 8-core. HP Z800 or Boxxtech 8520, but in this class the winners on price appear to be Dell and... I’m not kidding about this... no, really, I’m serious, you can check their web site... Apple.)

If that price tag just scared you or your IT director, consider this. The Midrange system, which is an excellent value and does everything you need it to, is half the price. But doubling the price nearly doubles the Vray/mental ray/etc. render speed. The i7-980X is 87% faster than the i7-860, and the rest of the hardware supports that CPU speed very well. The extra investment cuts your render times, and your test render times, in half, and that productivity boost will help you make deadlines and will save you valuable hours. If your time is billed at $100, and you save two hours of productivity a week, that $1500 difference is paid off in under two months.

That's all for now. Check back for regular updates, including the article on CPUs later this week.

Disclaimers: All prices are based on Newegg.com’s prices as of the day I am writing this. Prices are subject to change. This page is provided for information purposes; neither the author nor 3DATS are computer vendors, and we do not provide service, guarantees or warranties for any of the equipment described here. These configurations are primarily designed for people working in architecture and design visualization, but if you're a senior animator at Pixar you probably already have a guy in charge of providing your workstation.

March 2010 Workstations

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Lynn) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:37:00 +0000

For an explanation of the methodology behind these configurations, please refer to the Workstations Introduction page. For an overview of a workstation’s parts, please refer to the Workstation Parts page.

For the readers' convenience, I am providing links to the parts lists I made on Newegg in the course of planning this article. If the Newegg lists differ from the tables shown here, it's because I noticed that a part was out of stock or discontinued, and made a change. You'd be amazed at how quickly computer parts turn over.

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This month’s Intern system is a dual-core that will provide enough power for your architectural interns’ AutoCAD and Microsoft Office needs at an entry-level price. We’ve saved money by using a CPU, motherboard and RAM that are a previous generation of technology and a case and power supply sold together. You can go cheaper, but I wouldn't recommend it.

(Pre-Built Option: If you don’t want to build your own PC, use the HP.com web site to custom configure an HP Compaq 6000 Pro Microtower PC with the same stats given here, but with a Radeon 4650 video card. It will cost twice as much but will include a 3-year warranty.)

The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

For the Budget system we step up to a newer generation entry level CPU, the quad-core Intel Core i5. This is the entry-level system for 3D visualization users. Due to a software bug that may cause errors when using a Geforce video card with Revit, if you are planning on using this as an entry-level Revit system you would do well to substitute a video card that uses the Radeon HD 4670 chip instead of the EVGA GT220 video card.

(Pre-Built Option: Again, a custom HP Compaq 6000 Pro Microtower PC can be substituted. Use a Core 2 Quad Q9400 CPU, 8GB RAM and a Radeon 4650 video card. Again, it will cost nearly twice as much but will include a 3-year warranty, and of course you won’t have to build it yourself.)

The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange system system steps up to the quad-core Core i7 CPU. Astute readers will notice that a 900 series CPU is used instead of the more budget-friendly 800 series; this is due to the superior bus performance of the LGA1366 motherboards that support the 900 series CPUs, and for future-resistance. When the six-core i7 CPUs are introduced later this year, they will be 900-series CPUs requiring LGA1366 motherboards. The Lian Li aluminum case is light, easy to assemble and provides excellent cooling, and the Neo Eco power supply is efficient and powerful enough to drive these upgraded components.

(Pre-Built Option: Unfortunately this machine falls into a class that PC vendors don’t like to provide. If you were a salesman, a gamer or a senior animator at Pixar they’d know what to sell you, but you’re not and they don’t. The closest match would have to be an HP Z400 workstation, with a single Xeon W3520 CPU and a FireGL V5700 video card, or a Boxxtech 4850, but the prices are higher than they would be if the non-”workstation” business desktop systems had more options.)

The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This seriously powerful workstation is based on two CPUs, each roughly equivalent to the i7 used in the Midrange system, and twice as much RAM - so expect it to render twice as quickly. Install Windows and your software to the SSD hard drive for fastest load times and keep your working files on the large terabyte hard drive. The Quadro video card will ensure optimal display performance and keep you on Autodesk tech support’s good side.

Be aware that motherboards in this class don’t have sound cards included (serious parts for serious people who don’t listen to MP3s at work). If needed, you can add any PCI sound card, but if you’re a serious person with serious audio needs, consider a professional grade external device from a company like M-Audio. But this motherboard is easier to work with than most in its class, because it fits an ATX standard case. If you opt for a different motherboard, make sure you choose a compatible case.

(Pre-Built Option: Now we’re in that “senior animator at Pixar” class. HP Z800 or Boxxtech 8520, but in this class the winners on price appear to be Dell and... I’m not kidding about this... no, really, I’m serious, you can check their web site... Apple.)

That's all for now. Check back for regular updates.

[Edit: To promote the new site, 3DATS is offering a free book to CGArchitect forum users who purchase a workstation recommended here! See this thread for more information.]

Disclaimers: All prices are based on Newegg.com’s prices as of the day I am writing this. Prices are subject to change. This page is provided for information purposes; neither the author nor 3DATS are computer vendors, and we do not provide service, guarantees or warranties for any of the equipment described here. These configurations are primarily designed for people working in architecture and design visualization, but if you're a senior animator at Pixar you probably already have a guy in charge of providing your workstation.